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…
We have closed our second blog poll and we have counted the votes. First of all, it is heartwarming to see that more readers are concerned about the position of orphans than about private copying: whereas our first blog poll about the orphan works directive attracted a few thousand voters, this second poll closed with a result…
“Does the European Single Market provide the right legal framework for the unhindered exchange of formats between the Member States?” Formats, especially television formats, have proven their commercial value, but the question whether copyright protection also applies to these products of the mind, which they undoubtedly are, cannot be answered easily and there are valid…
“The study concludes that under their domestic copyright laws none of the current EU Member States offer protection to sports events as such. A handful of countries, however, afford some special form of protection to the specific interests of sports organizers.” A study on sports organizers’ rights was launched by the European Commission in January…
In France, search engines using thumbnails are likely to infringe on copyright. On 8 April 2014, a French Senator proposed a Bill to establish compulsory collective management for the reproduction of photographs and images by search engine services. Thumbnails are reduced-size versions of photographs and images, used by search engines such as Google Images in…
Important ruling by Dutch Supreme Court on cable retransmission, film copyright and collective management of rights Guest blog by Prof. Dr D.J.G. Visser, Institute for Private Law, Leiden University “This could well mean that several Dutch collecting societies, in particular those representing actors, screenwriters and directors (Norma, Lira and Vevam) can no longer claim remuneration…
