“A young photographer, Ladislav Bielik, did what came naturally. He raised his camera and shot back.” Last week, people in Slovakia and Czech republic were commemorating the 45th anniversary of the Soviet invasion of  former Czechoslovakia. In August 1968, about 500,000 Soviet troops and most of their Warsaw Pact allies invaded Czechoslovakia, with tanks to halt…

“The occasional use of an unusual expression – such as “she has a black belt in shopping, so uh …” to describe the shopping behavior of Endstra’s wife  – is not enough to make a copyrighted work of an otherwise banal or trivial designed conversation.” Amsterdam Court of Appeal, 16 Juli 2013 (Endstra heirs vs….

“In essence, the disputes relate to the collecting societies’ intent to have intermediary suppliers pay levies on computers, printers and or plotters marketed in Germany. The suppliers, for their part, argued that some of the devices in question (namely printers and plotters) are incapable of autonomous copying.” On June 27, 2013, the CJEU delivered its…

“Before finalising its decision however, it is seeking the CJEU’s input on whether end users, who view web-pages on their computers without downloading or printing them, are committing infringements of copyright if they lack a licence from the rightholder.” On 29 June 2013 the UK Supreme Court referred a series of questions in Case C-360/13 Public…

“When it is established or not contradicted that a reasonable remuneration has been offered, additional circumstances will be necessary in order to conclude that publication is indeed illegitimate.” In an interesting case about the portrait rights of the legendary Dutch football (soccer) player Johan Cruijff, the Supreme Court of the Netherlands recently ruled that a…

“The BGH thus insinuates that framing may be a yet “unnamed right of exploitation” within the scope of Art. 15(2) Copyright Act.” On 16th May 2013 the first Senate of the German Federal Court of Justice (BGH), delivered its judgment in another case revolving around the issue of hyperlinking or framing. If one had hoped…

“The Cabinet of Ministers has failed to assess impact of technology development onto blank tapes and equipment to be used for reproduction and thus imposable with blank tape levy.” (Judgement Constitutional Court, 14.3). Last year, the Satversmes tiesa, the Constitutional Court of Latvia, had to deal with the first copyright case since its establishment in…

“The Supreme Court considers that the participants in the reality TV program had no role to play and that there was no text. They were simply asked to be themselves and express their reactions to the situations they faced. The artificial nature of these situations was not enough to give them the quality of actors.”…