Exhaustion refers to one of the limits of intellectual property (IP) rights, such as copyright. Once a product covered by an IP right has been marketed by the right owner or by others with the consent of the owner, the IP rights of commercial exploitation over this given product are said to be exhausted and can no longer be exercised by the owner.
As the environmental crisis escalates due to overproduction and overconsumption, there is an increasing recognition of the urgent need for environmental consciousness and a shift towards a sustainable, circular economy (see, in the intellectual property context, Pihlajarinne & Ballardini (2020), Senftleben (2023), Calboli (2024)). Upcycling, notably, which involves reworking old items or their parts into…
Over the last decades, European lawyers got used to the – at times remarkable and even forceful – interventions of the Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU) in copyright law. But last year, one supranational interference with copyright law surprisingly did not come from Luxemburg, but from Strasbourg: the judgment in Safarov v Azerbaijan….
Free spaces in copyright law are fundamental. They allow us to use and enjoy copyright works, ultimately supporting the creation of future works. Yet, since the Information Society Directive, European copyright law has preferred to protect and incentivise online business models over creativity. This post reflects on the role of exploiters, namely copyright holders with…
Part I of this blog introduced the first of three ambiguities NFT purchasers may face. In this part II we discuss two additional aspects, with a focus on UK copyright law and the EU copyright acquis. The First Sale Doctrine in the Metaverse The first sale doctrine, also referred to as the ‘principle of…
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…
Welcome to the first trimester of the 2022 round up of EU copyright law! We started this rubric back in 2021. In this series, we update readers every three months on developments in EU copyright law. This includes Court of Justice (CJEU) and General Court judgments, Advocate Generals’ (AG) opinions, and important policy developments. You…
The UK government has run a consultation on the future of the UK’s exhaustion of IP rights regime. This ran for 12 weeks, closing on 31 August 2021. The consultation was open to responses from businesses, representative organisations, civil society organisations, legal practitioners, creators and consumers. The government is now considering the responses to the…
Part I of this post introduced the recent emergence of Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs), explained their basic characteristics and what they can represent. In this Part II we discuss copyright law aspects of NFTs, with a focus on the EU copyright acquis. Where Copyright Law meets Blockchain As anticipated by the examples in Part I…
One of the most awaited copyright rulings of 2019 – Nederlands Uitgeversverbond and Groep Algemene Uitgevers v Tom Kabinet Internet BV and Others (C-263/18), on the admissibility of digital exhaustion under the InfoSoc Directive – came out on 19 December, lost in the decisions galore issued by the CJEU the last working day before the…
On 17 September 2019, the Paris Court of First Instance (“court”) delivered its judgment in the dispute between UFC-Que Choisir (“UFC”), a consumer organisation, and a videogame distribution platform operated by Valve. Among other issues, the court was asked to decide whether subscribers to Valve’s platform should be allowed to resell videogames purchased digitally. The…
