It doesn’t  happen every day that copyright law and its daily application receive such an overwhelming media coverage. Germany’s biggest news portals, the public service broadcasters and major newspapers all reported about a case that appears to be a  routine job for a copyright lawyer. In the last two weeks a wave of cease and…

“The first question (territoriality) and the last question (single EU copyright title) could be considered as the alpha and the omega of the questionnaire and they are interlinked in various ways.” A public consultation on the review of EU copyright rules was launched by the European Commission a few  days ago .  The consultation refers…

By Valentina Moscon, Scholarship holder at the Max Planck Institute & University of Trento The Italian Parliament recently approved a new law concerning the valorization of culture (Law of October 7, 2013, n. 112, G.U. n. 236, 8.10.2013). The law includes, in section 4, a regulation for Open Access (OA) to scientific publications. With this new…

“For the ECJ, in the meaning of Article 5(3) of the Regulation 44/2001, a harmful event may arise from the possibility of obtaining a reproduction of a work from an internet site accessible within the jurisdiction of the court seised.” In its judgement Pinckney v. KDG Mediatech AG of 3 October 2013 (case C-170/12), the…

“The results are just about as astonishing as the number of people who participated.” In our first Kluwer Blog Poll, we asked for your reaction to the two following statements regarding the implementation of Directive 2012/28/EC on certain permitted uses of orphan works: 1) whether the Directive would significantly facilitate the mass-digitization efforts of cultural…

In February this year, the Czech Supreme Court ruled that a mere posting of an embedded link that links to copyright-protected material, must be regarded as a communication to the public and therewith as a direct copyright infringement. The Court was either unaware of pending cases in Luxembourg, or too impatient to wait for the…

“Civil proceedings for infringement of copyright are barred after 5 years from the day the holder of a right knew or should have known of the facts necessary to exercise his right.” In a judgement of 3 July 2013, the French Supreme Court clarifies the time limit for taking action to obtain damages for copyright…

“The report reflects the general tendency of Swiss legislative authorities to avoid legislative process and to favor a flexible approach of existing regulations.” The Swiss Federal Council reported a few weeks ago, in response to a postulate referred by the National Council in 2011 related to the legal situation of social media, that Social networks…

The right to exploit a recording “in the form of a phonogram published for commercial purposes”, includes the right to exploit it not only in the form of a tangible medium, such as a vinyl record or a CD, but also in the form of a downloadable digital file. The judgement of 11 September 2013…

“Concerns have been expressed by the German blogosphere that this mere “Lex Google” will put bloggers and smaller news-aggregators under the risk of being targeted by mass legal procedures of the publishers and that quotation rights are undermined.” It is no exaggeration to say that nearly the whole German copyright community is waiting for the next…