Professor of Literary and Artistic Property Law at the Columbia Law School Jane C. Ginsburg recently visited London, where she delivered her lecture in memory of a well-known legal scholar – Professor William (Bill) Rodolph Cornish. Described as “an intellectual property pioneer and modern legal historian”, his untimely death in January 2022 was a blow…

The H2020 project reCreating Europe performed an unprecedented mapping of EU and Member States’ sources on copyright flexibilities. Part I of this blog post explained the mapping of EU sources and their conclusions. Part II deals with the comparative analysis of the law of all 27 Member States, with related comparative findings. The mapping of…

As testified by collections such as those of Trinity College’s Old Library, copying and illustrating manuscripts by hand was such a well-developed practice among members of mediaeval religious orders in Ireland that two Christian saints – Columba and Finnian – ended up having the first recorded copyright dispute in the Western world’s history. The most…

Introduction In November 2022, almost 18 months after the transposition deadline, Law 4996/2022 (Of. Gov. Gaz. A 218/24.11.2022) implemented into the Greek legal order Directives (EU) 790/2019 (hereinafter DSMD) and 789/2019 (as well as Directive 2006/115 on the public lending right, but this is another (lengthy) story…). In doing so, it amended Law 2121/1993, the…

Order no. 2021-580 of 12 May 2021 (‘transposition Order’) of the French Government implements articles 2(6) and 17 to 23 of the EU Directive 2019/790 on copyright and related rights in the Digital Single Market (‘CDSM’). In a ruling of 15 November 2022, the French administrative Supreme Court annulled the transposition Order to the extent that it does…

Welcome to the first trimester of the 2023 round up of EU copyright law! In this edition, we report on an AG Opinion that came out late in 2022 and update you on what has happened in the first trimester of 2023 in EU copyright law. This includes Court of Justice (CJEU) and General Court…

In August 2020, a review of the Orphan Works Directive (2012/28/EU), or OWD, was initiated by the European Commission. The study concluded that the OWD has had limited practical impact, but the European Commission has not proposed any modifications to the Directive. This post provides a short introduction to the OWD, an overview of the…

The European Commission has referred six Member States (Bulgaria, Denmark, Finland, Latvia, Poland and Portugal) to the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) for failure to notify complete transposition measures on copyright in the Digital Single Market (Directive (EU) 2019/790) (CDSM Directive). This follows its decision last year to send reasoned opinions to 13…

Pastiche is one of the newer harmonized user rights in EU copyright law. The exception for caricature, parody and pastiche was made mandatory as part of Article 17 of the Copyright in the Digital Single Market Directive (CDSMD) in 2019. Although the implementation deadline passed in 2021, several Member States have yet to transpose the…

Introductory remarks The Greek legislator transposed Directive (EU) 2019/790 (CDSMD) with considerable delay, enacting L. 4996/2022 in November 2022 (ΦΕΚ Α´ 2022/24.11.2022), which amended the basic Greek Copyright Law (L. 2121/1993 on “Copyright, Related Rights and Cultural Matters”) as well as L. 4481/2017 on “Collective Management of Copyright and Related Rights” (ΦΕΚ Α’ 100/20.7.2017). Among…