Collective management is the exercise of copyright and related rights by organisations known as collective management organisations (CMOs) or collecting societies, which act in the interest and on behalf of the owners of rights and ensure that creators receive payment for the use of their works.
The Italian Antitrust authority (AGCM) has launched an investigation to assess whether the conduct of META towards SIAE, the largest Italian copyright collecting society, is unlawful due to abuse of economic dependence (for a previous post on the copyright dimension of the META v. SIAE dispute, see here). Let’s start with the background. META and…
Background On 8 September 2022, the Brussels court of appeal delivered a long-awaited judgment in a case between the collective management organisation “Belgian Association of Authors, Composers and Publishers” (“SABAM”) and a wide array of music festival organisers in Belgium, the overarching Federation of Music Festivals in Flanders (“FMFF”) and British direct licensing company Pace…
The removal of SIAE’s repertoire from Meta’s social networks “This song is currently unavailable” or “The audio track in your reel is no longer available. You can replace the audio track once, which will also remove any original audio in your reel”. These are some of the messages appearing on Instagram or Facebook to users…
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…
1. Introduction Last week, a preliminary hearing took place before the European Court of Justice (CJEU), in a case dealing with the implementation of the Collective Rights Management (CRM) Directive (2014/26/EU) in Italy. The AG Opinion is expected on 11th May. The Civil Court of Rome submitted a preliminary ruling request (No. 10/2022), in the…
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…
Much has been said about the press publishers’ right, introduced by Article 15 of the Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market (CDSM). Aimed at ensuring remuneration for publishers when their publications are reused online by news aggregators, Article 15 grants press publishers the right of reproduction and the right of making available for…
Judgment nº208/2021 of Madrid Commercial Court nº16 (December 20th, 2021) Context and facts This case concerns a dispute between the collecting management organisation CEDRO[1] and GOOGLE DISCOVER for non-payment of fair compensation for the limitation established in article 32.2 (now abrogated by the implementation of the CDSM Directive[2]) of the Spanish Copyright Act (SCA) between…
A conference jointly organized by the Department of Law of the University of Cyprus and the H2020 project reCreating Europe – Nicosia, 31 October – 1 November 2022 The University of Cyprus, together with the Horizon 2020 project reCreating Europe, funded by the European Commission, is conveying the conference “Rethinking copyright flexibilities”. The…
As a matter of principle, the exercise of the exclusive rights under copyright is the author’s individual prerogative: it is the author who decides whether they wish to authorize the reproduction or communication to the public of their works (the same goes for the performer, the producers, the broadcaster or the news publisher). Exceptionally, copyright…
