Introduction 9 July 2015 saw the resolution of the umpteenth case involving Spain’s National Commission for Markets and Competition (CNMC) versus a Spanish collecting society (judgment here). On this occasion, the society was SGAE, responsible for managing music copyright. The proceedings examined a complaint made by various composers regarding the measures that the society had…
By Jeremy Blum and Luke Maunder, Bristows A recent decision in the UK Intellectual Property and Enterprise Court (IPEC) provides some helpful guidance on the application of the ‘user principle’ and, more importantly, on the interplay between damages for flagrant infringement under s.97(2) of the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 (CDPA) and damages under…
Case I ZR 177/13 of November 17, 2014: Moebelkatalog [Furniture Catalogue] published here. According to a recent ruling of the German Highest Civil Court, the Bundesgerichtshof (“BGH”), the copyright exception for “incidental inclusion of a work or other subject matter in other material” (Article 5 (3) lit. i) Copyright Directive 2001/29) has to be interpreted…
The Polish Supreme Court held that the use of elements of a work of authorship, which are widely known and available (in the public domain), in another work in which those elements were combined in a different way, constitutes an expression of individual creative thought, and cannot therefore be regarded as an infringement of copyright…
In the September 3rd edition of Science∣Business, Julia Reda, German Pirate Party member of the European Parliament (MEP) sitting on the EP Justice Committee, was said to be confident that a mandatory text and data mining (TDM) deal could be introduced for researchers. This should come as music to the ears of the members of…
The installation of TV sets in hotel rooms, which show videograms through the TV signal distributed by a cable operator, constitutes a public performance and the making available to the public of those videograms. Consequently, authorisation is required from concerned rightholders and equitable remuneration is payable under the relevant provisions of the Code of Copyright and Related Rights…
By Jeremy Blum and Jade McIntyre, Bristows The EU Directive on the collective management of copyright and multi-territorial licensing of online music (“the Directive”), published on 26 February 2014, entered into force on 10 April 2014 and must be transposed into national law by 10 April 2016. The policy underpinning the Directive is part of…
We reported here last month that the private copying exception, which took effect on 1 October 2014 as s.28B of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, was declared unlawful by the High Court. The court found that the evidence relied on by the government in order to introduce the exception without also providing a means…
A recent judgment by the CJEU set aside a decision of the General Court annulling an OHIM decision to invalidate a Community trade mark owned by the National Lottery Commission, based on the presumed existence of an earlier copyright. The CJEU remitted the case back to the General Court for a ruling taking into account…
In determining the amount of remuneration that an author might obtain for the copyright in his photographs, it was necessary to determine the remuneration that he would have received if the person who violated his rights had entered into an agreement with the author concerning the use of the work. Such a determination should be based on the remuneration rates in the…
