The Supreme Administrative Court held that pursuant to § 2, para. 9 of the Law on Copyright and Related Rights (LCRR), permanent objects that represent the synthesis between architecture and other arts should be regarded as works of architecture. Under Article 12, para. 2 of the LCRR, copyright in a work of architecture, created after…
The Supreme Court held that “uses in any other manner” as provided in Article 172a, para. 1 of the Criminal Code covers any possible use of a copyright protected work. It is not necessary to refer to additional statutory rules, because “uses in any other manner” as one of the forms of unauthorised use is…
By Martin Husovec, Tilburg University and Matej Gera, CIPPM, Bournemouth University This a continuation of our recent blogpost: “Slovakia adopts a new Copyright Act: It’s a Mixed Bag – Part I”. In the first part, we discussed the amended threshold for the protection of subject matter, exceptions and limitations and explained changes that have been…
The federal district court in Manhattan properly awarded over $250,000 in attorney fees and costs to hip-hop star Jay Z (aka Shawn Carter) and his companies, Roc Nation and Roc-A-Fella Records, for their successful defense against time-barred claims brought by sound engineer Chauncey Mahan, the U.S. Court of Appeals in New York City has held….
On 2 February 2016, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) delivered its first post-Delfi judgment on the liability of online service providers for the unlawful speech of others. Somewhat puzzlingly, the Court reached the opposite conclusion from that of last summer’s controversial Grand Chamber ruling, this time finding that a violation of Article 10…
A 2001 letter from an attorney representing the heirs of Superman co-creator Jerome Siegel effectively transferred all copyrights in the Superman character to DC Comics, the U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco has decided (Larson v. Warner Bros Entertainment, February 10, 2016, per curiam). Siegel’s daughter, Laura Siegel Larson, could not go forward with…
By Martin Husovec, Tilburg University and Matej Gera, CIPPM, Bournemouth University Some will associate the year of 2016 with the year of the Fire Monkey or the monkey selfie. Not Slovak copyright scholars, whose government decided to engage in its own monkey business – an entirely new Copyright Act (Act No. 185/2015). Being the third…
Case C‑572/13, HP v. Reprobel, 12 November 2015 By Philippe Laurent and Céline Wulleman, Marx Van Ranst Vermeersch & Partners As we know, Member States may adopt exceptions to the reproduction right of authors in the cases and under the conditions listed in Article 5 of Directive 2001/29. Some of those exceptions may be transposed…
Decision of the German Bundesgerichtshof (“BGH”) of July 9, 2015, file no. I ZR 46/12 (“Die Realitaet II”) The CJEU confirmed in Svensson that linking to content may be a public communication where it reaches a new public. Some issues, however, remained unresolved. One open question is whether linking to illegal content always reaches a…
In response to a reference from the Bundesgerichtshof (Germany), the CJEU ruled that geographical information extracted from a topographic map by a third party in order to produce and market another map retains, following its extraction, sufficient informative value to be classified as ‘independent materials’ of a ‘database’ within the meaning of Article 1(2) of…
