The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) is an institution of the European Union (EU). It is responsible, inter alia, for ensuring that EU law is interpreted and applied in a consistent way in all EU countries. If a national court is in doubt about the interpretation or validity of an EU law, it can ask the Court for clarification. The same mechanism can be used to determine whether a national law or practice is compatible with EU law. The CJEU also resolves legal disputes between national governments and EU institutions, and can take action against EU institutions on behalf of individuals, companies or organisations.
Having established in part 1 of this blog post that Article 17 will place significant economic burdens on platforms large and small, and that those burdens create incentives for platforms to further impact the freedom of expression and information of users, we go on to examine in part 2 whether those burdens constitute a restriction…
The risk of mandatory upload filters for freedom of expression and information online has been at the core of criticisms of Article 17 of the EU Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market (DSM Directive). This risk is evident from numerous examples of restrictions on legitimate speech resulting from the voluntary use of such…
On the 16 July 2020, the Advocate General (AG) Saugmandsgaard Øe delivered his much-awaited opinion on the case of Peterson v YouTube (joined cases C-682/18 and 683/18), referred to the CJEU by the German Federal Court of Justice. Having explicitly precluded the consideration of provisions of the Copyright in the Digital Single Market (DSM) Directive…
As we enter a new year, we would like to take this opportunity to pass on our best wishes for 2021 to all of our readers, as well as reflect on developments in copyright over the past year. Despite its challenges, last year was another busy one in the copyright world, with ongoing European copyright…
For all its hardships, the pandemic has been a fruitful time for webinars. While they are not a complete replacement for real world seminars, there is a distinct advantage to being able to attend many conferences, seminars and lectures from home and still feel part of the IP community. Here is a summary of some…
To ensure you don’t miss out on interesting IP law developments reported on our other IP blogs, we will, on a regular basis, provide you with an overview of the top 3 most-read posts from each of our IP law blogs. Here are the top posts from September, October and November. Top 3 Kluwer Copyright…
By now everyone in the world must have heard of Sweden, especially European copyright lawyers. This post concerns two recent preliminary rulings from the CJEU, both at the request of Swedish courts. As both involved the communication to the public right, and both led the CJEU to pronounce the infrequently heard incantation that Article 3…
On Tuesday, November 10, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU or Court) heard case C-401/19. This case is a request by the Polish government to annul the filtering obligation contained in Article 17 of the Copyright in the Digital Single Market (DSM) Directive on the grounds that it will lead to censorship…
The first part of this blogpost analysed the main theoretical foundations of the AG’s Opinion in the VG Bild-Kunst case (C‑392/19). The second part focuses on the application of this theoretical background to frame links and inline (automatic) links. As will be shown, the AG has proposed a methodological model of distinction between hyperlinks on…
On September 10, 2020 the Advocate General (AG) Maciej Szpunar delivered his Opinion on the case of VG Bild-Kunst v Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitzanother (C‑392/19), a further case concerning the legality of linking. The assessment of linking from an EU copyright law perspective appears to be a labyrinthine legal exercise, since, following the seminal Svensson (C‑466/12)…
