In its latest opinion, the European Copyright Society has reviewed the German Federal Court of Justice’s (BGH) referral in the Pelham II (a.k.a. Metall auf Metall) case. Although the beginning of the legal dispute dates back to 1999, a quarter century seemed to be not enough to answer all possible questions surrounding the sampling of a…
Just seven weeks after the release of the AG’s Opinion the Kwantum v. Vitra case was decided by the European Court. For Dutch background and early criticism, see my earlier blog. The main question asked to the Court was whether a Member State may unilaterally apply the Berne Convention’s rule of material reciprocity (Article 2(7)…
Code as a literary work Following lengthy discussion in the 1970s and 1980s, by 1991 in the EU and 1994 at the WTO level, the legal status of computer programs was a settled matter: software was to be treated under copyright as a literary work. Source code and object code are protected by copyright. As…
Once again, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) will be asked to provide clarity on the concept of “communication to the public” as laid down in article 3 of the 2001 Copyright in the Information Society Directive (InfoSoc Directive). On 20 September 2024, the Dutch Supreme Court expressed its intention to refer…
The European Federation of Academies of Sciences and Humanities (ALLEA) has for many years supported the move away from proprietary models of scholarly publishing towards Open Access (OA).[1] ALLEA, therefore, welcomes the recognition in the laws of an increasing number of European countries of so-called ‘Secondary Publication Rights’ (SPRs) that allow publicly funded researchers to…
The Institute for Information Law (IViR) at the University of Amsterdam, in collaboration with Kluwer Law International, publisher of the Information Law Series, has launched an online archive of older book volumes published in the series. The Information Law Series, which was established in 1991, is the world’s first and foremost academic book series in…
On 26 September 2024, the Belgian Constitutional Court referred a highly topical issue of fair remuneration of authors and performers on online streaming platforms to the Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU). The reference, which is poised to result in one of the most significant CJEU judgments in the copyright law field, concerns the…
Generative AI (GenAI) is promising to revolutionise higher education. Whether it concerns legal scholars using ChatGPT to write their essays, computer science majors relying on GitHub Copilot to generate programming code, or art students turning to Midjourney to create visual artistry: the relevant AI tools to assist with educational assignments are readily available online. The…
Large language models are built on scale. The bigger they are, the better they perform. The appetite for letters of these omnivorous readers is insatiable, so their literary diet must grow steadily if AI is to live up to its promise. If Samuel Johnson, in one of his famous Ramblers of 1751, grumbled about the…
The Advocate-General’s opinion in the Kwantum v. Vitra referral is remarkable in several ways. The case concerns the protection under Dutch copyright of the iconic “DSW” chair designed by American designers Charles and Ray Eames. Kwantum, a popular low-budget furniture store chain, sold copies of the chair without rightholder Vitra’s permission. Before the Dutch courts…
