Introduction The SGAE case recently resolved by the Spanish Competition Authority ended in a settlement agreement, as we previously reported . As we indicated in that article, this case did not just examine relations between the collecting society and users regarding the establishment of licensing terms and conditions. The initial analysis also tackled the complex…
E-book lending in public libraries (e-lending) and the need to extend the public lending right (PLR) to these practices has been discussed on several recent occasions. Following the Sieghart report on e-lending in 2013, the UK government has extended the PLR to e-book downloads occurring within the premises of UK libraries. In 2013-14 the Commission…
An interesting case about the legality of a regulation issued by the Estonian Government on the “blank tape levy” The Estonian Authors’ Society, Estonian Performers’ Union and Estonian Association of Phonogram Producers (right holders’ collecting societies) filed a complaint in the administrative court claiming monetary damages (income loss) from the Government of the Republic of…
Decision Oberlandesgericht (Court of Appeal) Hamburg of July 1, 2015, file no. 5 U 87/12 and Landgericht (District Court) Munich I of 30 June 2015, file no. 33 O. 9639/14 YouTube is the most popular video-sharing website in the world. As it is not entirely free of videos that infringe third party copyrights, it is…
The assignee of the rights to a screenplay by actress and author Emma Thompson about the life of historical figure Euphemia Gray (Effie Film, LLC) should not have been granted an award of nearly $500,000 in attorney fees and costs that it incurred in successfully seeking a declaratory judgment that its screenplay did not infringe…
The court held that the applicable law is determined by the lex loci protectionis (Schutzlandprinzip), therefore the question of authorship in Switzerland is determined by the Swiss “creator’s principle”, not the British principle of “work for hire“. Where it is claimed that there has been a parallel creation, inspired by elements in the public domain…
When considering whether a collective management organisation had abused its dominant position by imposing unreasonably high licence fees, it was justifiable to compare its fees with the fees in other markets. These markets should be comparable to the Latvian market in order to achieve the correct outcome. As well as having a similar gross domestic…
The Batmobile, as it appeared in the Batman comic books, television series, and motion picture, was entitled to copyright protection because, as an “automotive character,” it was a sufficiently distinctive element of those works, the U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco has held (DC Comics v. Towle, September 23, 2015, Ikuta, S.). The Ninth…
Robert Snow, author of the 2012 book Slaughter on North LaSalle, did not infringe Carol Sissom’s copyright in her 2006 book The LaSalle Street Murders, because none of the material that Sissom alleged was taken from her book was protectable material under the Copyright Act, but merely restated historical events, the U.S. Court of Appeals…
The court of appeals held that as there was no evidence that the Defendants had gained any profit from a public display of sculptures, they were not liable to pay royalties in respect of the exhibition. However, the defendants were ordered to discontinue sales of products bearing pictures of the copyright sculptures as this activity…
