In the appeal of a case concerning allegations of infringement of IP rights in live football statistics sites, the Court of Appeal rejected the claimant’s copyright claim, affirming the high standard of subsistence in a database under Article 3(1) which must go beyond ‘mere data’ to involve some ‘creative skill’. Concerning the sui generis right,…

Kitchin J granted an order for security for costs under rule 24.6 CPR against the claimant in a copyright infringement case. While remaining sensitive to the right of access to the court of the claimant and acknowledging that security for costs should only rarely be ordered solely where the case appears weak, the judge considered…

By Gaetano Dimita The football data clashes continue. This time, the Court of Appeals decided to bring an important aspect of the Dataco case (as mentioned here) to the attention of the Court of Justice: Hearing the appeal and cross appeal on Football Dataco Ltd, The Scottish Premier League Limited, The Scottish Football League Limited…

The use of a photograph of a politician with a child, in combination with a satirical text, in a self-advertisement of a news magazine, is not covered by the freedom of satire when the satire does not concern daily political events but is merely commercially self-serving. Furthermore, the implication of a political relationship between the…

In this decision the Court of Cassation confirmed that Dailymotion was an online intermediary provider, who did not intervene in the content and choice of videos posted by users on its platform. In addition, the commercial exploitation of the website through the sale of advertising spaces did not induce that Dailymotion could intervene on the…

As mentioned in a previous post, on 22 March 2011 the Spanish Audiencia Nacional (High Court) annulled for formal reasons the Spanish ordinance that determines which digital reproduction equipment and media are subject to the private copying levies. The ordinance had been challenged before the Spanish courts by the Asociación de Internautas (an Internet users’…

What is and what is not a copyright work is a question even copyright lawyers find difficult to answer when confronted with subject matter on the verge of the required standard of originality. Polish copyright law has quite a long tradition of setting the threshold rather low, which may encourage frivolous lawsuits forcing courts to…

In case C 393/09, the ECJ decided that a GUI is not a form of expression of a computer program and cannot therefore be protected by copyright as a computer program under Directive 91/250/EEC. Indeed, that directive protects the forms of expression of a computer program and the preparatory design work capable of leading, respectively,…

The variation of the Austrian National Anthem by setting it to a modernised “rock-version” of the classic tune and by changing the line “You are home to great sons” to “You are home to great sons and daughters” for use in an information campaign by the Austrian Federal Ministry for Education, Arts and Culture, does…

According to the Austrian Supreme Court, the EU Copyright Directive 2001/29/EC harmonises the right of communication to the public, assuming a consistent European term of publicity. The right of communication to the public is characterised by an element of distance. Therefore, the distribution by a hotel of a broadcast via TV to the TV-sets situated…