Last week the European Commission published its proposal for a Data Act. The proposal is the second major element of the European Data Strategy presented in 2020 and complements the Data Governance Act that is expected to be formally adopted this spring. As expected, the proposed Data Act introduces rules strengthening user access and portability…
The buzz around AI-generated outputs seems to never stop. While the field is rich on exaggerated claims, there are certain domains that have seen a genuine revolution fueled by AI. One such field is journalism. In the past years, sophisticated AI algorithms have become a meaningful assistant in the European news industry. Going beyond mere…
Readers of this blog will be familiar with the English High Court’s strong track record in issuing injunctions to compel internet service providers (“ISPs”) to block access to copyright-infringing websites. In the latest such order issued by the High Court (on 3 February 2022), one of the target websites was a cyberlocker hosting movies and…
At the time that Directive 2019/790/EU (DSM Directive) was being developed, much media attention was focussed, over a period of many months, on the liability of online content sharing service providers for content uploaded by their users. Initially in Art. 13 and ultimately in Art. 17 of the DSM Directive, the Directive stipulates that online…
Fashion is an industry largely led by seasonal trends. Status-conferring new designs are being launched bi-annually, during the Autumn/Winter and Spring/Summer fashion shows, to meet the needs of our capitalistic society. Even though fashion designs are often inspired by the prior art, seasonal trends precondition innovation – new design themes that make the highly desirable…
Google prevails in what it has called “the copyright case of the decade.” Google LLC’s copying of approximately 11,000 lines of code from the Java SE application programming interface to create the Android mobile operating system was a fair use of that material as a matter of law and did not support copyright infringement by…
Debate on AI and IP continues Copyright and Artificial Intelligence (AI) or, more specifically, Machine Learning (ML) has become a hotly debated topic. It has attracted attention not only among academics but also increasingly among policy makers. The US government ran a consultation on AI and IP a few years ago. The UK government has…
There has been widespread press coverage of Meghan Markle’s (the Duchess of Sussex) recent success in a claim which she brought against the publishers of the Daily Mail, Mail on Sunday and the Mail Online website (“the Mail”). In February 2021, the High Court granted Ms Markle summary judgment on her claim for misuse of…
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…
“Web3 cannot and should not be reduced to blockchain when the real shift is towards user ownership of digital assets… This definitional shift focuses attention on what assets can be legally owned and the meaning of ownership “rights,” more generally, in the emerging digital spaces of web3.” The Rift Over Web3 The week before…
