When it comes to copyright it is a game of all or nothing. During the term that a copyright exists, the owner of a copyright has a monopoly on the work due to the exclusive rights of reproduction, distribution and communication to the public. When the copyright protection expires and the work enters the public…
The document delivery service of ETH Zurich (scanning individual articles and sending them by email to the users) is covered by the exception for private use (Art. 19 CopA), as a person entitled to make copies of a work for private use (Art. 19 al. 1 CopA) may also have them made by libraries and…
The Court rejected B’s application to establish his authorship of a film as a legal fact. Under Copyright Law no registration or other formalities are required to enjoy copyright protection. It follows that a person owns copyright upon creating a work and there are no special documents certifying the authorship. Therefore a court cannot turn into a…
In a battle between the Zurich Eidgenössischen Technischen Hochschule (ETH) and three publishers (Elsevier, Springer, Thieme), the Zurich Commercial Court, in its decision of 7 April 2014, prohibited the library from providing a document delivery service (scanning and sending journal articles by email to the users). The Supreme Court reversed this ruling, in its decision…
I am happy to announce the release of my book Guide to Copyright in France – Business, Internet and Litigation. French copyright law is one of the most original and dynamic copyright systems at this time. This book is a practical and straightforward guide to how copyright works in France: protection, ownership, assignment agreements, collective…
On December 16, search engine giant Google started excluding stories from Spanish news media on its Google News service. The Californian internet company has taken the decision in the wake of the so-called ‘Google tax’, which forms part of the Spanish government’s new Copyright Act, due to go into force on January 1, 2015. The…
Competition and collecting societies: a special application of European legal doctrine in Spain. “It seems to utilise the previous methods in a forced manner, even though those methods had led to very different conclusions on a European level.” In a recent decision by the Spanish Market and Competition Commission (CNMC), once again penalising SGAE with…
On the 1st October 2014, the Copyright and Rights in Performances (Extended Collective Licensing) Regulations 2014 came into force in the UK.1 Licensing bodies and collecting societies already operate within the UK, providing rights management and licensing services for their rightsholder members across a range of sectors including publishing, art and design, music and…
“In addition to the requirement of written form, any transaction or notice aiming at the relinquishment of copyright and thus releasing the work into the public domain further requires the notarization of the written form as a condition of validity.” Under Chapter IV of Law No: 5846 (1) on Intellectual and Artistic Works, the Turkish legal system (2) …
By Kluwer Law International Kluwer Law International is looking for an Associate Editor for the Kluwer Copyright Blog (the blog you are reading now) and for our Landmark EU Copyright Cases project. The Associate Editor will report directly to the editorial team at Kluwer Law International, and will work closely with the Editor-in-chief, Dr. Lucie…
