[By Dr Luke McDonagh} The UK Government’s response to the Hargreaves’ Review includes the approval of a number of THE reports recommendations, the main ones being the acceptance of the need for a new procedure to clear and license orphan works, and the acceptance that some form of Digital Copyright Exchange is required. With regard…
On July 6, 2011 the Italian Communications Authority (AGCOM) approved the “Draft regulation regarding copyright protection on the electronic communications networks”, currently subject to a 60-day public consultation. As mentioned in my previous posts, AGCOM’s proposal of new rules for the protection of copyright in Internet and audiovisual media services was heavily criticized because of…
On 19 November 1992, the European Council adopted the Directive 92/100/EEC on rental right and lending right and on certain rights related to copyright in the field of intellectual property (now replaced by Directive 2006/115/EC), which provides an exclusive right to authorize or prohibit the rental and lending of originals and copies of copyrighted works….
A Committe set up by the Danish Government has recently proposed concrete initiatives to strengthen the enforcement of copyright on the Internet. The Committee identified four primary focus areas: enforcement of copyright on the Internet, legal business models, increased consumer awareness and sending information letters. In addition, the Committe rejects so-called compensation models according to…
In a somewhat surprising move, on 12 July 2011 the lower house of the Spanish Parliament urged the Government to abolish the so-called “canon digital” (the private copying levy on digital media) and replace it by a “less arbitrary and indiscriminate system” that provide rightsholders with a “fair and equitable remuneration based on the effective…
For years, consumer representatives, citizen rights groups and academics have lobbied for a better balance between the interests of rights holders and consumers in copyright law. In particular the use of technical and contractual restrictions on the ability of consumers to play, copy, share or transfer digital content to their liking has been a notorious…
On 21 October 2010, the European Court of Justice rendered its judgement in case C-467/08 Padawan v SGAE, calling the current application of Spanish private copying levy into question. The judgement maintained that the Spanish private copying levy is abusive and that it does not meet with what Directive 2001/29/EC, on the harmonisation of certain…
The dust has now settled on the Hargreaves Review – officially known as “A Review of Intellectual Property and Growth” – which was published during May 2011. The main focus of Professor Ian Hargreaves’s review was copyright law and he made a number of interesting recommendations in this area. Firstly, one of the major points…
Recently a Committee of inquiry appointed by the Swedish Government proposed a new copyright act to replace the present (Swedish) Act on Copyright in Literary and Artistic Works, which came into force in 1961. The Committee was chaired by Professor Jan Rosén at the Faculty of Law, Stockholm University. According to the proposal the provisions…
The saga of copyright protection of industrial design works continues. Historically, Italian courts had been very reluctant to recognize copyright protection to industrial design works due to a provision (now abrogated) contained in the Copyright Law that clearly excluded copyrightability of creative works whereas the artistic value of the work was not separable from the…
