On 26 March, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) handed down Case C-279/13 C More Entertainment, the latest decision regarding the right of communication to the public in the context of websites providing links to content. In this particular case, C More provided live broadcasts of ice hockey matches on the Internet for payment of…

On 5 March 2015, the Spanish National High Court convicted the administrators of the website Youkioske of an aggravated intellectual property offence and of promoting and establishing a criminal organisation.  The judgment can be deemed ‘historic’ since it is the first time that the operators of a downloads site have faced a penalty of this…

On March 5, 2015 the Court of Justice of the European Union (the ‘Court’ or ‘CJEU’) ruled on Case C-463/12 Copydan Båndkopi v Nokia Danmark A/S (‘Copydan’). The case marks the seventh occasion on which the Court has ruled on the issue of the private copying limitation under art. 5(2)(b) Directive 2001/29/EC (the ‘Directive’), following…

On 1 May 2015 a new, second, ‘anti-piracy’ law [1] will take effect in Russia. This law amends the provisions on preliminary interim blocking injunctions for intermediaries introduced by the first anti-piracy law, which took effect on 1 August 2013. In the opinion of this blogger, the new law, like its predecessor, will barely affect…

On June 24, 2014, the Austrian Supreme Court ruled that the Austrian internet service provider UPC Telekabel Wien GmbH must block access to copyright infringing websites.  The Supreme Court noted that, in accordance with the ruling of the Court of Justice of the European Union in Case C-314/12, such an injunction leaves its addressee to determine the specific measures to…

An auction house may transfer the responsibility of paying the artist’s ‘droit de suite’ from the seller to the buyer. This judgment, rendered by the European Court of Justice on 26 February 2015 in response to a reference from the French Supreme Court, will satisfy the auction houses and art dealers in Europe (Christie’s France…

A brief outline of the copyright protection granted for architectural designs In Article 2/1,  the Berne Convention counts architectural works, together with plans, sketches and three-dimensional works relative to architecture, as copyrightable subject matter. Turkish law treats architectural creations in two different categories: as “literary works” and “works of fine art”. Accordingly, under Law No…

The latest large-scale reform of the Spanish Copyright Act was published on 5 November 2014.  The key aspects of the reform are discussed here.  The bulk of the opposition to the reform contends that two provisions of the Act, namely, the new regulation for private copying and the imposition of a “one-stop shop” system, breach the…

In a recent decision, the Spanish Market and Competition Commission (CNMC), imposed a fine of 3.1 million Euros on the Spanish collecting society, SGAE, for demanding an excessive fee for concert licensing. This decision is of particular interest because the Spanish competition authority has taken a new approach when interpreting the European law on the method of analysing the fairness…

Please click here to find US copyright cases from the U.S. Supreme Court, the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, and the U.S. Circuit Courts of Appeals with a detailed summary of each case. Recently added from our US IP Law Daily service: Gaylord v. U.S., United States Court of Appeals, Federal Circuit, No. 2014-5020, 4 February…