Jurisdiction

Austria, Authorship, Case Law, Distribution (right of), European Union, Jurisdiction, Remuneration (equitable)

(European Audiovisual Observatory )/ /1 Comment

On 6 September 2011, General Advocate Verica Trstenjak released her Opinion on case C-277/10 (the original German version of the Opinion is available here, other language versions here). The case deals a.o. with the controversial cessio legis provision of the Austrian Urheberrechtsgesetz (Copyright Act – UrhG). According to this provision included in Art. 38(1) UrhG,…

Authorship, Infringement, Italy, Jurisdiction

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The Tribunal of Rome has rejected the appeal brought by Reti Televisive Italiane (RTI, Mediaset Group) and Endemol, respectively the broadcaster and the producer of the Mediaset TV program “Baila!”, against the first instance decision in the urgent proceeding for provisional measures of the same court, holding that the program was an unauthorized copy of…

Authorship, Case Law, Poland

(Institute of Intellectual Property Law, Jagiellonian University Kraków)/ /Leave a comment

There are many interesting ways one may become a co-author of a copyright work, but in one of its recent decisions the Polish Supreme Court seems to have added a new and quite interesting option. You can namely become a co-author if you delete a few sentences from a scientific article, sentences you believe are…

Case Law, Exhaustion, Jurisdiction, United Kingdom

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

In its groundbreaking judgment of 4 October 2011 the Court of Justice of the European Union has essentially legalized the import, sale and use of foreign satellite television decoder cards. The judgment, which was given in two joined (originally British) cases, concerned decoder cards that provide access to encrypted satellite transmissions from Greece of British…

Belgium, Case Law, Enforcement, Exceptions and Limitations, Infringement, Liability, Making available (right of), Remedies, Technological measures

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

This sentence summarizes quite well the decision of the Antwerp Court of Appeal of 26 September 2011 which it is abstracted from. The Belgian Anti-piracy Federation filed a cease and desist action against Telenet and Belgacom, two Belgian ISPs, in order to make them block The Pirate Bay’s websites in their respective networks. In first…

Belgium, Case Law, Enforcement, Infringement, Remedies

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

In this post, I would like to come back to an interesting decision of the Belgian Cour de Cassation of 7 October 2010, which confirmed that a cease and desist action could be successfully sought against a copyright licensee. As usual, the Supreme Court’s decision is quite concise and does not extensively detail the facts….

Case Law, Portugal, Subject matter (copyrightable)

(Maastricht University)/ /Leave a comment

On 30 June 2011, the Lisbon Court of Appeals has issued its decision in case 323/07.8TVLSB.L1-2 (unfortunately there is no English translation of this). The facts of the case are as follows: a company wanted to hire an artist to create a sculpture, and for that purpose it received a few proposals from different artists….

International Agreement, USA

(Schulich School of Law )/ /Leave a comment

The global intellectual property landscape has witnessed important changes in recent years. Most notably, the public interest dimension of intellectual property has emerged as a paramount concern. Though there seems to be a fairly broad agreement on the need for a more balanced intellectual property system which effectively promotes innovation, views diverge on how to…

Exceptions and Limitations, Legislative process, Private copying, United Kingdom

(Centre for Commercial Law Studies at Queen Mary, University of London)/ /Leave a comment

[By Dr Luke McDonagh} The UK Government’s response to the Hargreaves’ Review includes the approval of a number of THE reports recommendations, the main ones being the acceptance of the need for a new procedure to clear and license orphan works, and the acceptance that some form of Digital Copyright Exchange is required. With regard…

European Union

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

Territorial licensing of media content has for some time now been a painful stumbling block in the realization of the EU’s ambitious vision for a common, European-wide audiovisual market. One, if not the most important reason why online audiovisual viewers are continuously reminded that the internet is not as borderless as they thought it was…