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…
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…
On December 17, 2021, in a big win for electronic dance music (EDM) artists, the Dutch Supreme Court held that DJs own phonographic rights (neighbouring rights) in their home-produced recordings – not the record labels that commercially release them. The decision comes in a long-running dispute between world-famous Dutch DJ and EDM artist Martin Garrix…
On June 7th, two years after its adoption, the deadline for implementing the DSM Directive finally expired. While academics and stakeholders have been critically dissecting its controversial provisions on platform liability, news aggregation and text & data mining, the Directive’s Chapter 3 (‘Fair remuneration in exploitation contracts of authors and performers’) has gone almost unnoticed,…
The first part of this series provided an introduction to the Dutch DSM copyright directive transposition bill submitted to the Dutch parliament on 15 May (operative provisions Dutch / auto-translate, explanatory memorandum Dutch / auto-translate), and a discussion of the provisions transposing Article 15 (the press publishers’ right). Part 2 continued with an analysis of…
The first part of this post provided an introduction to the DSM copyright directive transposition bill submitted to the Dutch parliament on 15 May (operative provisions Dutch / auto-translate, explanatory memorandum Dutch / auto-translate), and a discussion of the provisions transposing Article 15 (the press publishers’ right). This Part 2 continues with an analysis of…
Introduction On 15 May, the Netherlands became the first EU member state to submit a complete DSM copyright directive transposition bill to parliament.[1] Both the timing and the content of the legislative proposal show an acute desire to avoid the risk of late or incorrect transposition.[2] In the operative provisions (auto-translate) and explanatory memorandum (auto-translate),…
One of the most awaited copyright rulings of 2019 – Nederlands Uitgeversverbond and Groep Algemene Uitgevers v Tom Kabinet Internet BV and Others (C-263/18), on the admissibility of digital exhaustion under the InfoSoc Directive – came out on 19 December, lost in the decisions galore issued by the CJEU the last working day before the…
On 12 June 2019, the High Court of the Netherlands referred four questions to the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) for a preliminary ruling. The questions concern an ongoing battle between Stichting Brein, a Dutch anti-piracy organisation representing movie and music industries, and NSE (News-Service.com), an online platform for Usenet services. Stichting…
Part 1 of this post discussed the legislative history and significance of the CJEU referral in Tom Kabinet. This part will illustrate content and implications of the three classificatory dichotomies, explain why EU copyright law needs digital exhaustion, and propose interpretative solutions for the CJEU to help with this, leveraging the occasion offered by the…
