The European Commission has published its long overdue guidance on the application of art. 17 of the Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market (CDSMD), a mere three days before the implementation deadline. The final version of the guidance makes it clear that the Commission has abandoned the position it held before the CJEU…

In Part 1 of this blog post, we introduced the core mechanism of ex-ante protection against the blocking of legal uploads in Germany’s implementation of art. 17 of the Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market (CDSMD). In Part 2, we examine other elements of the German implementation bill, the “Act on the Copyright…

On 28 May the German Bundesrat approved the law transposing Directive (EU) 2019/790 on Copyright in the Digital Single Market (CDSMD), thus finalizing the national implementation process. At the core of the German transposition of the CDSMD is the “Act on the Copyright Liability of Online Content Sharing Service Providers” (Urheberrechts-Diensteanbieter-Gesetz – UrhDaG), which implements…

Despite the turbulent times Italian politics have experienced in the past year – which led to a change of government in the midst of the pandemic emergency – the ball of the transposition of the CDSM Directive (CDSMD) into Italian law is still rolling. As of today, it is difficult to predict whether the deadline…

In a trial to assess the quantum of financial loss in the IPEC, FBT Productions LLC v Let Them Eat Vinyl Limited [2021] EWHC 932 (IPEC), Deputy High Court Judge Ian Karet found the claimant was not entitled to damages for loss of opportunity since that defendant’s wrongdoing did not cause the loss. Damages for…

Navy’s failure to track simultaneous users created copyright infringement liability. Though the Court of Federal Claims correctly found that the U.S. Navy was deemed to have received an implied-in-fact license to copy Bitmanagement Software GmbH’s copyrighted graphics-rendering software onto its computers, the trial court erred by not finding that the Navy breached this license when…

Copyright law continues to confront an age-old question: how to best balance copyright interests? This year marks the 20-year anniversary of the Information Society Directive meant to provide a harmonised framework for digital copyright in the EU. This balancing act has proved more complex as technology developed and inherent flaws within the framework became more…

In late 2020, the Supreme Court of New Zealand gave judgment on copyright aspects of the dispute on whether Kim Dotcom and other’s involved in the Megagroup businesses should be extradited from New Zealand to the United States because of criminal copyright infringement. This episode, in a case which has involved multiple legal contests, was…

Recently, the Court of Appeal in TuneIn v Warner Music UK Ltd & Anor confirmed the continued application of “retained EU law” in the UK on the thorny issue of communication to the public and clarified the assessment of the “new public” in TuneIn appeal. The UK approach for now remains in line with the…

Although the legal consequences of infringement of different IP rights (e.g. copyright, trademarks and patents) are in principle identically regulated in Austria by the corresponding laws, the requirements for protection and acts of exploitation reserved to the proprietor, which are adapted to the market conditions, are fundamentally different depending on the type of IP right….