The digital codes were created for functional purposes and were put together under purely mechanical rules. The digital codes sent by a pyrotechnics control system were not entitled to protection under the Copyright Act because they were no more than “an inevitable system dictated by the logic” of the setup, the U.S. Court of Appeals…

The Council of the EU has recently adopted conclusions on research assessment and implementation of open science (the ‘conclusions’). Adopted in June 2022, the three areas covered by the conclusions are: (I) Reform of research assessment systems in Europe; (II) European approach and capacities for academic publishing and scholarly communication; and (III) Development of multilingualism…

Three dissenters would have dismissed the case as improvidently granted because the petitioner appeared to address different issues in its brief from its petition for review. An inaccuracy in a copyright registration application that results from a mistake—whether of fact or of law; that is, lack of factual or legal knowledge of the inaccuracy on…

Almost 3 years after the adoption of the Digital Single Market (Directive (EU) 2019/790) (CDSM Directive), its transposition by the Member States (MS) has proved to be a significant challenge. During a fervent period of failed timely implementation efforts on many fronts (see here), MS need to be vigilant and ensure that the delicate balances…

Nelson Mandela said that “Education is the most powerful weapon to change the world”, but is it powerful enough to change copyright? A long-standing debate has been going on regarding the supporting, or rather, hindering role of copyright rules in educational settings. Recent developments shed new hope. With Article 5 of the CDSM Directive, the…

A defamation claim, too, was precluded by the Communications Decency Act. A federal district court in Boston correctly found that the manager of a neighborhood forum could not expose himself to defamation and copyright infringement claims by merely migrating the forum from one web platform to another, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First…

Introduction The Intellectual Property Enterprise Court (IPEC), part of the English High Court, has ruled that copyright subsists in the character of Derek ‘Del Boy’ Trotter and that a character can be protected as a literary work under the UK’s closed list of copyright works ([2022] EWHC 1379 IPEC). That copyright was found to have…

Welcome to the second trimester of the 2022 round up of EU copyright law! We started this rubric back in 2021. In this series, we update readers every three months on developments in EU copyright law. This includes Court of Justice (CJEU) and General Court judgments, Advocate Generals’ (AG) opinions, and important policy developments. You…

This year we have seen an influx of educational events dedicated to everything digital. In particular, non-fungible tokens (NFTs), crypto and metaverse have dominated our infospace. June was no exception. Last Wednesday, Fide (a legal-economic think-tank) held the latest in their series of Global Digital Encounters (GDE) – an online panel discussion focusing on the…

Last month, the Internal Market Committee of the European Parliament endorsed the provisional agreement previously reached with EU governments on the Digital Services Act (DSA). The DSA, together with its sister proposal on the Digital Markets Act (DMA), sets standards for a safer and more open digital space for users and a level playing field…