The legal battle over who has the copyright claim to the pictures taken by a monkey has finally come to an end. The monkey self-portrait (“selfie”) dispute is a series of much discussed legal proceedings concerning photos taken in 2011 by a crested black macaque, Naruto, using equipment belonging to a British tourist (David Slater)…
Introduction On 30 June 2017, the German “Bundestag” adopted the “Act to Align Copyright Law with the Current Demands of the Knowledge-based Society” (“Urheberrechts-Wissensgesellschafts-Gesetz- UrhWissG”). It essentially reforms the terms of use of copyright protected works in the fields of education and research and will come into force on 1 March 2018. This new Act…
Decision of the German Bundesgerichtshof of April 27, 2017, file no. I ZR 247/15: “AIDA Kussmund” (“AIDA Kissmouth”) In “AIDA Kissmouth”, the German Bundesgerichtshof (“BGH”), Germany’s highest civil court, ruled on the interpretation of the “works in public places” exception pursuant to § 59 (1) German Copyright Act that implements Art. 5 (3) lit. h Directive 29/2001…
Introduction and background Case C-265/16, VCAST, concerns the question of whether the private copying exception covers the services of an online platform that allows users to store copies of free-to-air TV programmes in private cloud storage spaces. In his opinion of 7 September 2017 (discussed here), Advocate General (AG) Szpunar proposed a mixed answer to…
Have you ever given an idea to a friend, who then weaved that idea into their work? Did you feel that you should be recognised for your idea being included even though what you contributed was rather high level? Two weeks ago, in the UK judgment Nicholas Martin v Julia Kogan [2017] EWHC 2927 (IPEC),…
The Austrian Supreme Court has recently shed some light on the requirements for the admissible quotation of photos (judgment of 26 September 2017, 4Ob81/17s). In this case, a photographer had taken photos of a poacher who was killed in 1982. The competent collecting society sued a private TV-broadcasting station for their unauthorised use of one…
On 7 September 2017, AG Szpunar delivered his opinion on Case C-265/16, VCAST. The case concerns the question of whether the private copying exception covers the services of an online platform that allows users to store copies of free-to-air TV programmes in private cloud storage spaces. AG Szpunar’s proposed answer was a mixed one: while…
In a recent UK judgment, Neptune (Europe) Limited v deVOL Kitchens Limited, Neptune was unsuccessful in its claim against a fellow kitchen designer, DeVOL. DeVOL’s ‘Shaker’ kitchen was found not to have infringed the UK unregistered design rights (“UDR”) and a Registered Community Design (RCD) in Neptune’s ‘Chichester’ range. UDR was created to complement copyright…
Legal enforcement of open source software license violations, in particular violations of the General Public License (GPL), has been established in Germany for quite some time. Back in 2004, the Regional Court of Munich I granted an injunction confirming copyright infringement on the basis of a violation of the terms of the GPLv2 (judgment of…
A full summary of this case has been published on Kluwer IP Law. The Estonian Authors’ Society (EAÜ) is a collecting society that administers authors’ economic rights in Estonia. The EAÜ sued a music concert organiser who had not acquired a corresponding licence for public performance of copyright works and had not paid a licence…
