“With a bit of pathos one may say that the CJEU has restored the old exhaustion principle to its full glory in the digital age. In order to do so the Court did not hesitate to be adventurous with legal interpretation and has also opened new fields for discussion.” On July 3 the CJEU delivered…
On 21 June 2012, Advocate General Cruz Villalón delivered his opinion in Case C-173/11: Football Dataco Ltd and Ors v. Sportradar GmbH and Ors regarding a question where the use of the content of a database protected by sui generis database right takes place. It has been four months since the Court of Justice delivered…
A greatest hits album by Spanish pop star Luz Casal is the subject of the first case to be brought before the Intellectual Property Commission, the body created by the so-called Sinde anti-downloading law, aimed at combating copyright violations on the internet. AGEDI, the collecting society that represents Spain’s phonographic producers, has filed a complaint…
“The Radio Company cannot be declared guilty for breach of copyright (illegal use of musical works), although no written agreement has been concluded. In Latvia, criteria for stipulation of the amount of remuneration are not given in the Copyright Law.” In 2006 the Autortiesību un komunicēšanās konsultāciju aģentūra / Latvijas Autoru apvienība, the Copyright and Communication…
“No obligation of monitoring subsequent publications is inscribed in the law; however French Courts have a tendency to impose such an obligation on hosting providers shifting from a notice and take down rule to a notice and stay down rule.” On 29 May 2012, the Paris Court of First Instance (Tribunal de Grande Instance) issued…
By Raquel Xalabarder, Universitat Oberta de Catalunya “This ruling is very good news for the recent doctrinal attempts to bring some flexibility in the way copyright laws are being interpreted and applied. It is difficult to predict the impact that this ruling may have in successive case law, but it is certainly an important milestone…
Literary works, photos, films and music and other items that constitute our common cultural heritage are stored in the collections of cultural institutions, such as publicly accessible libraries, museums and archives. Many of these items are still protected by copyright, but their right holders cannot be identified or located – i.e. the works are so-called…
German Court of First instance rules that YouTube is only liable for secondary liability for user’s infringing uploads, but must prevent future infringements of identified works by screening of and implementing a word filter for new uploads. In this test run case the German composers and lyricists collecting society GEMA claimed that 12 songs of…
The German Federal Court of Justice rejects liability for image search thumbnails even if they are indexed on websites showing the images without permission as long as other websites did so with the rights holder’s consent. The first landmark case involving thumbnail previews of Google’s image search function in Germany (Vorschaubilder I, 2010) had dealt…
Copyright law has developed in close connection with technological evolution. This is particularly true of digital technologies, especially the Internet, which, since the mid-1990s, has generated both vast opportunities and enormous challenges for the copyright system. Geographical distance is no longer an obstacle to the dissemination of works, which can now take place at virtually…
