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…
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…
“With respect to the current stunted reform, the new legislation once again touches on past issues that were never properly resolved, and I am afraid that this is still the case now. The first is the zombie issue of private copying and the second salient point of the reform is piracy. Other reforms regard the…
“With the decision in case C-114/12, the Court is now placing emphasis on the hypotheticals by holding that the mere possibility of an international agreement impacting the EU acquis is enough to rule out Member States’ intervention, making the EU exclusively competent to conclude this type of agreement.” On 4 September 2014, the Court of…
“The answers from Luxembourg were much awaited not only due to the questions being interesting as such, but also because academia, the European Commission and the CJEU do not see eye to eye on these currently highly debated issues.” In response to questions lodged by a Czech court (Krajský soud v Plzni) in a preliminary…
Two Acts of 2007 and 2014 to fight against counterfeiting have modified the French Intellectual Property Code, in order to enable improved compensation for the rightholders as well as better protection of intellectual property rights. In French intellectual property infringement cases, damages were traditionally supposed to cover the prejudice suffered, no more, no less. Punitive…
“The underlying key question – can technology solve this problem and, if so, should technology be allowed to determine law? – remains unanswered.” On 2-4 July 2014 Information Influx, the 25th anniversary conference of the Institute for Information Law (IViR) was held in Amsterdam. As part of the conference, on the morning of Thursday, 3…
“Every day citizens here in the Netherlands and across the EU break the law just to do something commonplace. And who can blame them when those laws are so ill-adapted.” Speech Neelie Kroes, vice-president of the European Commission, delivered at the opening of Information Influx, the 25th anniversary conference of the Institute for Information Law…
“A clear intention to solve some of the most disturbing problems in Spanish IP.” On February 14th, the Spanish Government approved a bill to amend the law of intellectual property (TRLPI). The bill is currently in its parliamentary proceedings. It is a “patchwork” reform bill dealing with very different topics, some more necessary than others, and…
“The Court added a cherry on top of the transparency cake.” It is no secret that secrecy in the TTIP negotiations has been bothering several sectors of civil society (apologies, but the links to back this up were too many to insert here). Just last week, the Court of Justice has issued a decision in…
