The limitation might have failed in an earlier period, but more recent precedents were more forgiving. Parties to a photo image license were free to contract for a two-year statute of limitations under California law, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has held. The court, in an unpublished opinion, also affirmed a…
On 30 December 2022, the Italian Supreme Court (Corte di Cassazione) issued an order that intervened again on the interpretation of the quotation exception under Article 70 of the Italian Copyright Act (l. 633/1941, l.aut.). The decision concerns an advertising campaign of a mineral water company. The commercial video promoting the mineral water features a…
According to French law, to fall under the parody exception, the second work must evoke the pre-existing work and present significant differences from it so there is no possible confusion with the parodied work, as well as constitute a manifestation of humour and mockery. If the second work does not satisfy these conditions, and does…
This post is based in part on an amicus brief filed by the Harvard Cyberlaw Clinic on behalf of Authors Alliance and ComicMix before the United States Supreme Court in Jack Daniels v. VIP Products. Ordinarily, authors who write parodies look to copyright limitations and exceptions to protect their rights. In the United States, the…
Grand Production d.o.o. v GO4YU GmbH (Case C‑423/21) The facts of the case are representative of the grey areas of the application of copyright territoriality in the digital era. The applicant, Grand Production d.o.o., is a Serbian company which produces television programs that are broadcast in Serbia by a TV channel, Prva Srpska Televizija. Another…
2021 saw a very active German Bundesgerichtshof (“BGH” – Federal Supreme Court) in the area of copyright law. This article covers the most relevant copyright law decisions of the BGH from that year. Part I addressed decisions in the areas of scope of protection, exploitation rights, exceptions and limitations, and copyright contract law. Part II…
The implementation transposition of the Copyright Directive 2019/790 (DSMD) in the summer of 2021 represented probably the greatest reform in German copyright law since the German Copyright Act (UrhG) came into force. Germany’s implementation of Art. 17 DSMD was discussed in an earlier blog post by Julian Waiblinger and Jonathan Pukas. The other changes to…
The decisions of the BGH (German Federal Court of Justice) in “YouTube II”, “uploaded II” and “uploaded III” have changed things, at least for hosting providers, in one key aspect: hosting providers can now be (indirectly) liable for the copyright infringements committed by their users, if those hosting providers violate duties of care. This post…
Because such relief was not specified in the Act, a demand for such relief required service of an amended complaint upon a defaulting defendant. A plaintiff who prevailed in a copyright infringement lawsuit against a defaulting defendant was required to serve an amended complaint upon that defendant if the amended complaint newly sought to hold…
Welcome to the fourth (and last) trimester of the 2022 round up of EU copyright law (even though slightly overdue)! While in the last three months of 2022 the CJEU was relatively quiet, the various EU policymakers have been very productive. In this series, we update readers every three months on developments in EU copyright…
