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.
A full summary of this case has been published on Kluwer IP Law and the case has been discussed on the Kluwer Copyright Blog here. The CJEU held that EU law, particularly Article 5(2)(b) of Directive 2001/29, precludes national legislation that subjects exemption from payment of the private copying levy for producers and importers of…
A full report of this case has been published on Kluwer IP Law The Supreme Court of Estonia analysed the conditions under which the public performance of works at a school concert falls within the free use exception. In principle, the Supreme Court agreed with the courts of lower instance by holding that the public…
The Estonian court recently examined the conditions under which the public performance of works at a school concert falls within the free use exception. The Estonian Authors’ Society (an authors’ collecting society) filed a claim against the City of Tartu (through the City Government of Tartu), which administers Miina Härma Gymnasium and had organised a…
The French Act No. 2012-287 of 1 March 2012 ‘on the digital exploitation of unavailable books of the twentieth century’ created a specific compulsory collective management system for out-of-commerce books, in Articles L.134-1 to L.134-9 French intellectual property Code (‘IPC’). These new provisions were intended to allow the digitisation and reissuing of books that are…
A new French Law provides that search engines using thumbnails will have to pay royalties via a compulsory collective management for the reproduction of photographs and images. The French Act No. 2016-925 of 7 July 2016 on freedom of creation, architecture and cultural heritage contains several provisions on copyright that modify the intellectual property Code…
What is an appropriate royalty for a broadcaster to pay for the right to include music in its broadcasts? This is a question the UK Copyright Tribunal considered recently in a rather dry but comprehensive decision. The decision was under Section 126 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 (“CDPA”) relating to a dispute…
In this case, brought by a Latvian collective management organisation (AKKA/LAA) against the Latvian Government, the European Court of Human Rights held as follows: 1. The protection of intellectual property rights, including the protection of copyright and the economic interests deriving from it, falls within the scope of Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 of…
The prior express consent of the author is necessary to use a copyright work under EU law; the statutory presumption of collective management of copyright doesn’t comply with the need for express prior consent, even with an opt-out possibility and for a legitimate objective, Advocate General Wathelet said in his opinion on the pending request…
The Norwegian Supreme Court confirmed that the distribution of copyright protected works via music channels was a distribution that required clearance from the rightholder. The judge held that when a distribution happens as a consequence of signals being taken down from a satellite transmission not meant for the public, as in the case under consideration, there is…
In response to a reference from the Spanish Supreme Court, the CJEU held that Article 5(2)(b) of Directive 2001/29/EC must be interpreted as precluding a scheme for fair compensation for private copying like the Spanish system, which is financed from the General State Budget in such a way that it is not possible to ensure that…
