Case Law

Case Law, CJEU, Communication (right of), Digital Single Market, European Union, Infringement, Liability, Netherlands

( Institute for Information Law (IViR))/ /Leave a comment

The case of Svensson Retriever has shown that a hyperlink to a work freely available on a website accessible for all internet users is not a new communication to the public in the sense of Article 3(1) of Directive 2001/29/EC. However, the preliminary questions posed to the ECJ by an interlocutory judgment of September 30…

Case Law, Enforcement, France, Infringement, Liability, Remedies

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The French Supreme Court (‘Cour de cassation’) has caused a stir in France (15 May 2015, No 13-27391), by quashing a judgment of the Court of Appeal of Paris for breaching Article 10-2 of the European Convention on Human Rights (“ECHR”). The Supreme Court held that before condemning an alleged infringer for copyright infringement, the…

Case Law, CJEU, European Union, Legislative process

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Readers of this blog are familiar (or should I say fed up?) with the piecemeal legal framework of EU copyright. With nine directives in the field of copyright alone (plus one on enforcement), the legal patchwork is evident. One of the problems with this scenario is the interplay of the different directives with one another….

Case Law, Legislative process, United Kingdom

(University of Reading)/ /Leave a comment

The Secretary of State’s decision to introduce section 28B of the CDPA 1988, which created an exception to copyright for personal private use without a mechanism for compensating rightholders, was found to be unlawful. The Secretary of State had introduced the provision on the basis that any harm caused to rightholders would be zero or…

Case Law, Collective management, Remedies, Spain

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Introduction The SGAE case recently resolved by the Spanish Competition Authority ended in a settlement agreement, as we previously reported . As we indicated in that article, this case did not just examine relations between the collecting society and users regarding the establishment of licensing terms and conditions. The initial analysis also tackled the complex…

Case Law, Collective management, Damages, Estonia, Legislative process, Private copying

(Palladium Attorneys at Law)/ /Leave a comment

An interesting case about the legality of a regulation issued by the Estonian Government on the “blank tape levy” The Estonian Authors’ Society, Estonian Performers’ Union and Estonian Association of Phonogram Producers (right holders’ collecting societies) filed a complaint in the administrative court claiming monetary damages (income loss) from the Government of the Republic of…

Case Law, Enforcement, Germany, Infringement, Liability

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Decision Oberlandesgericht (Court of Appeal) Hamburg of July 1, 2015, file no. 5 U 87/12 and Landgericht (District Court) Munich I of 30 June 2015, file no. 33 O. 9639/14 YouTube is the most popular video-sharing website in the world. As it is not entirely free of videos that infringe third party copyrights, it is…

Case Law, USA

(Wolters Kluwer Legal & Regulatory US)/ /Leave a comment

The assignee of the rights to a screenplay by actress and author Emma Thompson about the life of historical figure Euphemia Gray (Effie Film, LLC) should not have been granted an award of nearly $500,000 in attorney fees and costs that it incurred in successfully seeking a declaratory judgment that its screenplay did not infringe…

Authorship, Case Law, Infringement, Remedies, Switzerland

(Lenz & Staehellin, Geneva )/ /Leave a comment

The court held that the applicable law is determined by the lex loci protectionis (Schutzlandprinzip), therefore the question of authorship in Switzerland is determined by the Swiss “creator’s principle”, not the British principle of “work for hire“.  Where it is claimed that there has been a parallel creation, inspired by elements in the public domain…

Case Law, Collective management, Latvia, Remedies

(Albert Ludwig University, Freiburg)/ /Leave a comment

When considering whether a collective management organisation had abused its dominant position by imposing unreasonably high licence fees, it was justifiable to compare its fees with the fees in other markets. These markets should be comparable to the Latvian market in order to achieve the correct outcome. As well as having a similar gross domestic…