On March 10th, 2022, the Advocate General (AG) Pitruzzella delivered his Opinion on the case RTL Television GmbH v Grupo Pestana S.G.P.S., S.A., et al (C-716/20). The case is an ideal example of the intricacy of the EU copyright law edifice regarding the right of communication to the public, which appears as a patchwork of…
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…
This post is the second instalment of an analysis of the ‘very short extracts’ (VSE) carve-out to the press publishers’ right set forth in Article 15 of the CDSM Directive. The first part examined the legal nature of the VSE rule, concluding that it ought to be qualified not as an ‘exception’, but as a…
By now, Article 15 of Directive (EU) 2019/790 on copyright and related rights in the Digital Single Market (CDSM Directive) needs no wordy introductions. Put briefly, the provision requires Member States to introduce a related (or neighbouring) right for press publishers, applicable to online uses of their publications. By extending the rights of reproduction and…
Europol and the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) have recently jointly published an Intellectual Property Crime Threat Assessment. This report explores piracy and counterfeiting and is based on data from across the EU as well as Europol’s operational information. The report concludes that piracy and counterfeiting continue to pose a serious threat to the…
After two years of virtual-only meetings owing to the pandemic, on Friday 27 May 2022, the European Copyright Society (ECS) will gather in-person in Nottingham to discuss the constitutional turn and evolution of copyright law over the past few years, highlighting its influences from and interrelation with human rights law and related aspects such as…
Last week the European Commission published its proposal for a Data Act. The proposal is the second major element of the European Data Strategy presented in 2020 and complements the Data Governance Act that is expected to be formally adopted this spring. As expected, the proposed Data Act introduces rules strengthening user access and portability…
The buzz around AI-generated outputs seems to never stop. While the field is rich on exaggerated claims, there are certain domains that have seen a genuine revolution fueled by AI. One such field is journalism. In the past years, sophisticated AI algorithms have become a meaningful assistant in the European news industry. Going beyond mere…
At the time that Directive 2019/790/EU (DSM Directive) was being developed, much media attention was focussed, over a period of many months, on the liability of online content sharing service providers for content uploaded by their users. Initially in Art. 13 and ultimately in Art. 17 of the DSM Directive, the Directive stipulates that online…
Fashion is an industry largely led by seasonal trends. Status-conferring new designs are being launched bi-annually, during the Autumn/Winter and Spring/Summer fashion shows, to meet the needs of our capitalistic society. Even though fashion designs are often inspired by the prior art, seasonal trends precondition innovation – new design themes that make the highly desirable…
