Because the copyright owner had held the book out as nonfiction, the “asserted truths” doctrine precluded the owner from later claiming copyright protection for facts contained in it. The members of the pop music quartet The Four Seasons and the producers of the hit musical “Jersey Boys” were entitled to post-verdict judgment as a matter…
Lower court ruling dismissing claims accusing HP of selling unauthorized software updates was reversed on appeal. Claims of direct and indirect infringement by Hewlett Packard and a third party in connection with software updates for Oracle’s Solaris operating system were time-barred to the extent Oracle failed to investigate suspicions of misconduct, the Ninth Circuit has…
The story of Austria’s copyright levy on storage media (storage media levy, briefly “SML”) is not over: In its latest chapter, the Austrian courts – and now also the Court of Justice of the European Union (“CJEU”) – have to deal with the Austrian legislation once more and this time with a view to cloud…
Part 1 of this blog post introduced the claim by rightsholders and some other commentators that Article 17 of the EU Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market (DSM Directive) is a mere clarification of existing Court of Justice case-law on communication to the public and intermediary liability. The second part of this blog…
EU Member States are currently grappling with the task of implementing the Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market (DSM Directive) into national law. The European Commission is preparing its guidance to help national legislators make sense of its most controversial part, Article 17. These legislative developments have prompted a series of remarkably similar…
Pastor and church who sent YouTube DMCA takedown notices for videos of sermons posted on operator’s channel had good faith belief that videos were infringing. An ongoing dispute between a church and its pastor and a YouTube channel operator has been put to rest by the U.S. Court of Appeals in Atlanta, which affirmed the…
On 9 July 2020, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) delivered its judgment in Case C-264/19 Constantin Film Verleih v YouTube and Google Inc. Providing clarification on the scope of the copyright holder’s right to information, the CJEU decided that the notion of “address”, as set in Directive 2004/48/EC (Enforcement Directive), does…
As previously noted, on 18 June 2020 Hungary became the second Member State of the European Union to – partially – implement Directive 2019/790 on Copyright in the Digital Single Market (CDSM Directive). Under ordinary circumstances, the implementation of Art 5 of the CDSM Directive in Hungary would have been carried out along with the…
In Part 1 of this blog post we addressed certain criticisms from our esteemed colleagues Jan Bernt Nordemann and Julian Waiblinger to our 2019 working paper and the German implementation proposal of Article 17 of the Copyright in the Digital Single Market (CDSM) Directive. In this Part 2, we argue why the latter proposal is…
In a recent two part post on this blog, our esteemed colleagues, Jan Bernt Nordemann and Julian Waiblinger, argued that our 2019 working paper and the German implementation proposal reading of Article 17 Copyright in the Digital Single Market (CDSM) Directive are wrong when they treat that entire provision as lex specialis to Article 3…
