Much has been said about the press publishers’ right, introduced by Article 15 of the Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market (CDSM). Aimed at ensuring remuneration for publishers when their publications are reused online by news aggregators, Article 15 grants press publishers the right of reproduction and the right of making available for…

An interesting case recently decided by the Italian Supreme Court (Corte di Cassazione) has focused on whether the slogan “500% FIAT” can be protected by copyright (decision No. 8276/2022, published on 14 March 2022). The dispute was started by the author of the slogan against the Italian carmaker FIAT. The author had registered the slogan…

Introduction By introducing the press publishers’ right in art. 15 of the Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market (CDSM), the EU legislator wanted to aid press publishers in licensing and enforcing their rights in press publications. The hope was that once press publishers are recognized as rightsholders in the EU legislation, their legal…

On 8 February 2022, the Italian Supreme Court (the Corte di Cassazione) issued an order that intervened on the interpretation of the quotation exception under Article 70 of the Italian Copyright Act (l.aut.).[1] While the outcome was foreseeable and great part of its reasoning may be embraced without criticism, the core arguments of the decision…

Article 17 has been a (the) leading buzzword of the copyright reforms of the European Union in recent years (at least half a decade already). The transposition deadline has now passed. As of June 6, 2021, however, only a handful of Member States have implemented Directive 2019/790/EU (Copyright in the Digital Single Market; hereinafter CDSMD)….

Italian case law on dynamic injunctions and the impact of piracy of live sport events In previous posts on this Blog we have analyzed some developments in Italy with regards to private and administrative enforcement against illicit distribution of copyright content over the Internet and the use of the dynamic injunction, with special focus on…

Despite the turbulent times Italian politics have experienced in the past year – which led to a change of government in the midst of the pandemic emergency – the ball of the transposition of the CDSM Directive (CDSMD) into Italian law is still rolling. As of today, it is difficult to predict whether the deadline…

In the last few months of 2020 there have been further developments in Italy with regards to private and administrative enforcement against illicit distribution of copyright content over the Internet. 1. New Italian case law against Content Delivery Network (CDN) operators In a 2019 post on this Blog (here), we analysed the impact of illegal…

1. Italian Case Law on Fast Injunctions The impact of the illegal distribution of audiovisual content is growing (see, for Italy, the report issued in 2019 by FAPAV Federation for the protection of audiovisual and multimedia content). IP enforcement is an important part of the reaction against this illegal phenomenon. In 2019, some important improvements…

The statutory schemes of Italian and U.S. copyright law differ in their allocation of authorship status in that Italian law does not recognize the ab initio statutory allocation of copyright to the commissioner of a work made for hire. The assignment to a music publisher of composer Ennio Morricone’s copyrights in six Italian movie scores…