The Swiss working group on Copyright (AGUR12) released his report on December 2013 related to management of rights at the digital age. This should lead to a legal basis for a notice and takedown procedure and thus reduce the supply of illegal content, while downloading from illegal sources should remain legal. The original mandate goes…
It doesn’t happen every day that copyright law and its daily application receive such an overwhelming media coverage. Germany’s biggest news portals, the public service broadcasters and major newspapers all reported about a case that appears to be a routine job for a copyright lawyer. In the last two weeks a wave of cease and…
“Civil proceedings for infringement of copyright are barred after 5 years from the day the holder of a right knew or should have known of the facts necessary to exercise his right.” In a judgement of 3 July 2013, the French Supreme Court clarifies the time limit for taking action to obtain damages for copyright…
“A young photographer, Ladislav Bielik, did what came naturally. He raised his camera and shot back.” Last week, people in Slovakia and Czech republic were commemorating the 45th anniversary of the Soviet invasion of former Czechoslovakia. In August 1968, about 500,000 Soviet troops and most of their Warsaw Pact allies invaded Czechoslovakia, with tanks to halt…
“The occasional use of an unusual expression – such as “she has a black belt in shopping, so uh …” to describe the shopping behavior of Endstra’s wife – is not enough to make a copyrighted work of an otherwise banal or trivial designed conversation.” Amsterdam Court of Appeal, 16 Juli 2013 (Endstra heirs vs….
“Before finalising its decision however, it is seeking the CJEU’s input on whether end users, who view web-pages on their computers without downloading or printing them, are committing infringements of copyright if they lack a licence from the rightholder.” On 29 June 2013 the UK Supreme Court referred a series of questions in Case C-360/13 Public…
How the Polish broadcasting law on must-carry and must-offer makes broadcasters choose whether to infringe copyright and licensing contracts or the Polish Broadcasting Act. This post is about a rare mixture of folly and incompetence that is fortunately unlikely to leave any durable traces on the face of copyright law in Europe. However, the utter…
“When it is established or not contradicted that a reasonable remuneration has been offered, additional circumstances will be necessary in order to conclude that publication is indeed illegitimate.” In an interesting case about the portrait rights of the legendary Dutch football (soccer) player Johan Cruijff, the Supreme Court of the Netherlands recently ruled that a…
In a relatively recent judgement in a criminal case, the Supreme Court of Estonia ruled that that the terms ‘trade scale’ and ‘commercial scale’ are not synonymous. The concept ‘commercial scale’ in criminal law cannot be interpreted in such a broad sense as the concept ‘trade scale’. A. Gubinski allegedly committed a copyright infringement, therewith…
In a recent judgment, following the preliminary Infopaq-rulings of the European Court of Justice, the Danish Supreme Court ruled that extracts of newspaper articles comprising no more than 11 words can be works protected by copyright. The use of extracts that are the results of a process of data capture undertaken by the media analysis…
