The Court held that a greeting card designer was the sole copyright owner of the rights in a number of greeting cards but had validly assigned the copyright to the claimant. The defendants were jointly liable for infringement of copyright in two of the claimant’s cards. Case date: 06 June 2018 Case number: [2018] EWHC…
The European Parliament has just approved the new text of the copyright directive, which will now go to the Council for a final vote on April 15th, 2019. This legislation not only modifies the copyright framework as set out in the Information Society Directive (Directive 2001/29/EC) but it will also modify the liability regime as…
On Valentine’s Day, the Higher Regional Court of Vienna (docket no 4 R 119/18a) issued a judgment on a complaint by the Austrian broadcasting company Puls 4 against YouTube, predating the much-discussed Article 17 (formerly known as Article 13) of the Copyright Directive. The petition requested aimed to prevent YouTube from making available videos containing…
In its judgment of 19 December 2018 in Criminal proceedings against Imran Syed (C-572/17) the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) rules that the storage of copyright infringing items constitutes infringement of the distribution right if identical items are also held at the actual place of sale and those items are intended to…
New Swedish practice on how reasonable compensation for copyright infringement should be calculated was presented in a judgment of the Swedish Supreme Court concerning Dreamfilm’s sharing of a film from Svensk Filmindustri (SF). The verdict was given on 21 January 2019 (case no. B 1540-18). In the grounds of the judgment, there are new and…
Following the Paris Court of Appeal judgment of 10 May 2016 (No 14/25055), the French courts have tended to consider that a licensee who breaches the terms of a software licence agreement does not commit copyright infringement, and that general contractual liability applies instead. In the aforementioned case, the Court dismissed the licensor’s (Oracle) claims…
Introduction This post briefly discusses the new Counterfeit & Piracy Watch List published by the European Commission on 7 December 2018 (Watch List). The Watch List represents the EU Commission’s most recent effort to protect the intellectual property rights (IPRs) of European rights holders. Through a “follow the money” enforcement strategy, the Watch List targets…
Recently there has been an increase in the number of damages hearings in the UK. The trend continues with a recent High Court case (Reformation Publishing v Cruiseco Limited [2018] EWHC 2761 (Ch)) where the band Spandau Ballet’s management company sought compensation for unauthorised use of their copyright against a company using two of their…
While avid readers of IP blogs have recently learned about UK courts issuing flexible and powerful live blocking orders against illegal streaming websites (here), Italian courts imposing dynamic blocking orders elegantly skirting the outer limits of the general monitoring prohibition (here), and German courts handing down blocking injunctions based on something as German-sounding as Störerhaftung,…
On 10 January 2019, the Advocate General (AG) Szpunar delivered his opinion in the case Spiegel Online GmbH v Volker Beck (C 516/17). The case is part of a trilogy of preliminary references raised by the German courts focusing on copyright exceptions and the interaction of copyright law with fundamental rights (Pelham, C‑476/17 and Funke…
