New year’s fatigue? Or possibly AI fatigue? But the new year has only just begun! It does seem like the topic of AI and copyright was everywhere in the copyright world last year. While some digital topics have been known to cause a great commotion in copyright circles only to later sink practically without a…
A loophole in copyright protection? The 2009 directive on the legal protection of computer programs (the Software Directive) grants copyright protection to all forms of expression of computer programs. Its Article 4(1) mentions three exclusive rights. The first is the reproduction right, which covers not only permanent copies but also temporary copies loaded into the volatile…
In Greek mythology, the saga of Sisyphus personifies relentless and never-ending toil – condemned by the gods to an eternity of pushing a massive boulder up a steep hill, only to watch it roll back down again as he nears the summit. With 24 years of legal proceedings and a dozen court rulings behind them,…
“No artist starts from scratch in a vacuum”. This finding of the Berlin Regional Court seems obvious. But copyright law faces daunting challenges when copyrighted material not only inspires a creative process, but becomes the very object of it. From Italian opera to Andy Warhol to memes – incorporating and referencing other works has always…
2021 saw a very active German Bundesgerichtshof (“BGH” – Federal Supreme Court) in the area of copyright law. This article covers the most relevant copyright law decisions of the BGH from that year. Part I addressed decisions in the areas of scope of protection, exploitation rights, exceptions and limitations, and copyright contract law. Part II…
The implementation transposition of the Copyright Directive 2019/790 (DSMD) in the summer of 2021 represented probably the greatest reform in German copyright law since the German Copyright Act (UrhG) came into force. Germany’s implementation of Art. 17 DSMD was discussed in an earlier blog post by Julian Waiblinger and Jonathan Pukas. The other changes to…
The decisions of the BGH (German Federal Court of Justice) in “YouTube II”, “uploaded II” and “uploaded III” have changed things, at least for hosting providers, in one key aspect: hosting providers can now be (indirectly) liable for the copyright infringements committed by their users, if those hosting providers violate duties of care. This post…
Part I of this post discussed the changes to copyright contract law and the new text and data mining exemption provisions that formed part of the 2021 copyright law reform. Part 2 explores further exemptions for users of works, new aspects of the right of communication to the public and the press publishers’ right. It…
In the last year, the German Copyright Act has experienced what is probably its most substantial reform since it first came into force in 1966. The reason for this was the implementation of the DSM Copyright Directive 2019/790/EU (DSMD) and Directive 2019/789/EU (Online SatCab Directive). Secondly, the legislature felt obliged, in response to certain CJEU…
This contribution is based on a paper published in 44 European Intellectual Property Law Review 595 (2022) Photographs are included in Article 2(1) of the Berne Convention as copyrightable artistic works. All Berne Union Member States must thus provide copyright protection to photographic works. As is known, originality has always been the essential requirement…
