Communication (right of)

The right of communication to the public is set out in Article 3(1) of Directive 2001/29/EC (the Copyright Directive or Infosoc Directive), which requires that EU member states must provide authors with the exclusive right to authorise or prohibit any communication to the public of their works by wire or wireless means, including the making available to the public of their works in such a way that members of the public may access them from a place and at a time individually chosen by them.

Case Law, Communication (right of), Digital Single Market, European Union, Infringement, Liability

(Institute for Information Law)/ /Leave a comment

Article 3(1) of Directive 2001/29/EC (the Infosoc Directive) must be interpreted as meaning that a broadcasting organisation does not carry out an act of “communication to the public” when it transmits its programme-carrying signals exclusively to signal distributors without those signals being accessible to the public (the “direct injection” technique). This judgment by the European…

Case Law, CJEU, Communication (right of), Digital Single Market, European Union, Infringement, Liability, Netherlands

( Institute for Information Law (IViR))/ /Leave a comment

The case of Svensson Retriever has shown that a hyperlink to a work freely available on a website accessible for all internet users is not a new communication to the public in the sense of Article 3(1) of Directive 2001/29/EC. However, the preliminary questions posed to the ECJ by an interlocutory judgment of September 30…

Case Law, Communication (right of), Enforcement, Infringement, Landmark Cases, Remedies, United Kingdom

(University of Reading)/ /Leave a comment

This case concerned blocking orders pursuant to s97A of the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 (CDPA). The Court found that there was copyright infringement by both UK users and operators of file-sharing websites, insofar as there was communication of copyright works, the communication was to the public, and the act of communication took place in the UK.  This…

Case Law, Communication (right of), Damages, Infringement, Landmark Cases, Moral rights, Netherlands, Remedies

(Institute for Information Law)/ /Leave a comment

This case in the Court of Appeal of ‘s-Hertogenbosch concerned the use of a photograph of a photo model by two rappers in one of their music videos. The video was uploaded to YouTube after which it was disseminated via their own website’s homepage and their YouTube Channel. Although the rappers were authorised to do so by the…

Case Law, Communication (right of), Digital Single Market, Enforcement, Infringement, Remedies, Software, United Kingdom

(Bristows LLP) and (Bristows)/ /Leave a comment

Another blocking order in the UK, however, this time there was some complexity about the actual acts of infringement. In Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation & Ors v Sky UK Ltd & Ors, the High Court considered the circumstances in which website blocking orders should be granted against websites facilitating the use of a “sophisticated…

Belgium, Case Law, Collective management, Communication (right of), Digital Single Market, Making available (right of)

(CRIDS)/ /Leave a comment

On the 13th March 2015, the President of the Brussels French speaking Court of First Instance pronounced a judgment to the detriment of Sabam, an important collective management organisation in Belgium. In 2011 Sabam decided to claim a fee from Internet access providers in exchange for a licence which allows these providers to communicate copyright…

Case Law, CJEU, Communication (right of), Digital Single Market, European Union, Infringement, Making available (right of)

(Bristows LLP)/ /Leave a comment

On 26 March, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) handed down Case C-279/13 C More Entertainment, the latest decision regarding the right of communication to the public in the context of websites providing links to content. In this particular case, C More provided live broadcasts of ice hockey matches on the Internet for payment of…

Case Law, Communication (right of), Czech Republic, Enforcement, Infringement, Landmark Cases

(Advokátní kancelář Kříž a partneři s.r.o. )/ /Leave a comment

In a case concerning the use of a radio set in a small bike shop, the Constitutional Court ruled that in order to assess whether a user is making a communication to the public, the situation of the specific user and of all the persons to whom he communicates the protected works must be assessed. A…

Communication (right of), European Union, Infringement, Reproduction (right of), Software

(Crowell & Moring LLP and UCLouvain - Saint Louis Bruxelles)/ /Leave a comment

The book “The Variable Scope of the Exclusive Economic Rights in Copyright” recently published in Kluwer’s Information Law Series is the result of my doctoral research (which led to a doctoral dissertation defended at Vrije Universiteit Brussel in 2011).  This article provides an overview of the research described in the book, followed by a more…

Case Law, Collective management, Communication (right of), European Union, Jurisdiction, Landmark Cases, Legislative process

(Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition)/ /Leave a comment

“The answers from Luxembourg were much awaited not only due to the questions being interesting as such, but also because academia, the European Commission and the CJEU do not see eye to eye on these currently highly debated issues.” In response to questions lodged by a Czech court (Krajský soud v Plzni) in a preliminary…