In the case at hand there was a conflict due to the use of a work of art in the famous Spanish television programme “El Hormiguero” without the corresponding authorisation of the author. The work was used in a humorous section of the programme in the context of the apartment of a dirty and untidy…
On 20 April 2023, the Italian Civil Court of first instance of Florence (Tribunale civile di Firenze) issued a decision that held unlawful the reproduction by lenticular technique of the image of Michelangelo’s David and its juxtaposition with the image of a male model on the cover of GQ magazine. The reproduction was not authorized…
On 20 April 2023 in the joined cases Blue Air ( C-775/21) and SNTFC (C-826/21) the CJEU pronounced once again on the infringement of the right of communication to the public, making a further contribution to the already rich case law in this field. This time the questions related to the existence (or not) of…
In a recent judgment, the Supreme Court held that the appellant had not justified compelling interest in the appeal and, therefore, ruled the extraordinary cassation and breach of process appeals filed by the claimant inadmissible. This put an end to the dispute ongoing since 2016 concerning whether the role of an expert “professor” in the…
Professor of Literary and Artistic Property Law at the Columbia Law School Jane C. Ginsburg recently visited London, where she delivered her lecture in memory of a well-known legal scholar – Professor William (Bill) Rodolph Cornish. Described as “an intellectual property pioneer and modern legal historian”, his untimely death in January 2022 was a blow…
“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…
In March 2022 the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to review the Second Circuit’s ruling that Andy Warhol’s series of colorful prints and drawings of Prince were not transformative fair uses of Lynn Goldsmith’s photograph (for a previous comment on this case, see here). Vanity Fair magazine had commissioned Warhol’s artwork in 1984 to accompany an article…
The members of the European Copyright Society (ECS) have recently sent a letter to Mr. Thierry Breton (Commissioner for Internal Market, European Commission) outlining their view of what should be the priorities for a future agenda in the field of copyright law. The letter is available here and its contents are reproduced below. The…
The Italian Antitrust authority (AGCM) has launched an investigation to assess whether the conduct of META towards SIAE, the largest Italian copyright collecting society, is unlawful due to abuse of economic dependence (for a previous post on the copyright dimension of the META v. SIAE dispute, see here). Let’s start with the background. META and…
The H2020 project reCreating Europe performed an unprecedented mapping of EU and Member States’ sources on copyright flexibilities. Part I of this blog post explained the mapping of EU sources and their conclusions. Part II deals with the comparative analysis of the law of all 27 Member States, with related comparative findings. The mapping of…
