European Union

Authorship, Case Law, Digital Single Market, European Union, Germany, Infringement, Jurisdiction, Making available (right of)

(Institute of Legal Informatics, Leibniz Universität Hannover)/ /Leave a comment

“What has not been clarified though is the aspect of unfair competition.” On 21st of October 2014 the Court of Justice of the European Union delivered its order in a preliminary ruling procedure (C-348/13), which was referred to the CJEU by the German Federal Court of Justice (BGH) in May 2013.  As yet, only the…

Case Law, European Union, Exceptions and Limitations, Jurisdiction, Private copying, Reproduction (right of)

(Institute for Information Law (IViR))/ /Leave a comment

“What the Court did not consider though, is that the outcome of the application of the 3-step test to the digitisation of each individual work for the purposes of making it available for research and private study purposes may conflict with the absolute prohibition of digitising the entire collection.” Judgment CJEU of 11 September 2014,…

Belgium, Case Law, European Union, Exceptions and Limitations, Infringement, Jurisdiction

(Marx, Van Ranst, Vermeersch & Partners)/ /Leave a comment

Judgment CJEU, 3 September 2014, Deckmyn and Vrijheidsfonds (C-201/13). Request for a preliminary ruling from the Hof van Beroep te Brussel (Belgium). Belgian copyright law provides that “once a work has been lawfully published, its author may not prohibit caricature, parody and pastiche, observing fair practices”. This provision, which existed before the adoption of the…

Case Law, Collective management, Communication (right of), European Union, Jurisdiction, Legislative process

(Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition)/ /Leave a comment

“The answers from Luxembourg were much awaited not only due to the questions being interesting as such, but also because academia, the European Commission and the CJEU do not see eye to eye on these currently highly debated issues.” In response to questions lodged by a Czech court (Krajský soud v Plzni) in a preliminary…

European Union, Infringement, Jurisdiction

(KU Leuven Centre for IT & IP Law)/ /Leave a comment

“However, another aspect attracted my full attention.” While preparing a post for this blog about the wonderful panel ‘Who owns the World Cup: The case for and against property rights in sports events’,  that concluded IViR’s 25th anniversary conference, something unusual stopped me. I received an email from a colleague informing me that the videos…

Digital Single Market, European Union, Jurisdiction, Legislative process

/ /Leave a comment

“Every day citizens here in the Netherlands and across the EU break the law just to do something commonplace. And who can blame them when those laws are so ill-adapted.” Speech Neelie Kroes, vice-president of the European Commission, delivered at the opening of Information Influx, the 25th anniversary conference of the Institute for Information Law…

Case Law, European Union, Jurisdiction, Legislative process

(Maastricht University)/ /Leave a comment

“The Court added a cherry on top of the transparency cake.” It is no secret that secrecy in the TTIP negotiations has been bothering several sectors of civil society (apologies, but the links to back this up were too many to insert here). Just last week, the Court of Justice has issued a decision in…

Case Law, Collective management, European Union, Jurisdiction, Private copying

(Institute for Information Law (IViR)) and (Institute for Information Law (IViR), University of Amsterdam.)/ /Leave a comment

“This would mean that the ruling will not leave end-users substantially worse-off, despite the qualification of their acts as infringing. However, that is a difficult argument to make.” In its judgment of 10 April 2014 in Case C-435/12 ACI Adam BV and Others the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) ruled that the…

European Union, Jurisdiction, Legislative process

(KU Leuven Centre for IT & IP Law)/ /Leave a comment

“The study concludes that under their domestic copyright laws none of the current EU Member States offer protection to sports events as such. A handful of countries, however, afford some special form of protection to the specific interests of sports organizers.” A study on sports organizers’ rights was launched by the European Commission in January…

Austria, Case Law, European Union, Infringement, Jurisdiction, Liability

(CIPIL, University of Cambridge)/ /Leave a comment

“This indicates the main danger of the ruling, that of fragmentation. This was foreseen by the Austrian referring court, which suggested that guidelines assessing the proportionality of blocking measures be laid down by the CJEU – that would have been welcome indeed! That absence is certainly the biggest deficiency of the ruling.” Last Thursday, the…