A few weeks ago, the Spanish Ministry of Culture released a legislative proposal aimed at introducing extended collective licensing (ECL) for the development of general-purpose AI models. The first of its kind, the “Draft Royal Decree to regulate the granting of extended collective licenses for the massive exploitation of works and other subject matter protected…
In Equisafety Ltd v Woof Wear Ltd (Equisaftey) Ian Karat sitting as a Judge in the Intellectual Property Enterprise Court (IPEC) rejected the Claimant’s copyright infringement claim in respect of various equestrian garments because the garments did not qualify as works of artistic craftsmanship under s.4 of the Copyright Design and Patents Act 1988 (CDPA). …
Generative AI continues to make advances. And whilst its capabilities can be overhyped, there is undoubtably a growing perception that AI will soon be capable of effectively and infinitely ‘replacing’ the human performers on whose performances it is trained. Whether AI will ever fully achieve this goal in a cost-effective manner, or if the market…
Introduction This two-part blog post is aiming to explain what Rights Retention is and how it works in practice. In the first part, I’ll explain the forces at play in the publishing industry, why copyright ownership in academia is so important and how the publishing process works. These are technicalities that must be explained beforehand…
In the aftermath of the 2024 ATRIP Annual Congress, recently held in Rome and entirely dedicated to doctrinal developments on “Intellectual Property, Ethical Innovation and Sustainability”, we share our preliminary takeaways on this ongoing debate. The interplay between IP and Sustainability is well-known and hardly contested at global scale. In Europe, the role of IP…
This blog post contains an edited version of the European Copyright Society’s Opinion on Case C-227/23, Kwantum Nederland and Kwantum België. The Berne Convention underscores the national treatment of foreign authors, allowing Union states to protect designs through various means. Article 2(7) introduces a material reciprocity test, limiting copyright protection for works of applied…
WIPO negotiators appear prepared to approve a draft Broadcast Treaty that is no longer “signal-based” or limited to “traditional” (non-Internet-based) broadcasting. There is a significant push at this week’s meetings of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights to approve a Diplomatic Conference on a Broadcasting Organizations Treaty…
The ongoing Artificial Intelligence (AI) revolution has machine learning models at its core. Contrary to classic computer programs written by developers, many of these models rely on vast artificial neural networks trained in giant amounts of data. In general, they use what is called a transformer architecture. No one individually writes or encodes these models;…
The UK High Court has held that Lidl’s rights in the Lidl logo were infringed by Tesco’s Clubcard Price(s) signs ([2023] EWHC 873 (Ch)). Specifically, the court made the following findings. Trade mark infringement – Lidl’s trade mark for the Lidl logo was infringed by Tesco’s Clubcard Price(s) signs, which took unfair advantage of Lidl’s…
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…
