Exceptions and Limitations to copyright are provisions which allow for works protected by copyright to be used in specific situations without a licence from the copyright owner. There are numerous limitations and exceptions found in copyright legislation including, for example, the fair use exception, exceptions for libraries, archives and educational institutions, and the back-up copy exception.
On 8 February 2022, the Italian Supreme Court (the Corte di Cassazione) issued an order that intervened on the interpretation of the quotation exception under Article 70 of the Italian Copyright Act (l.aut.).[1] While the outcome was foreseeable and great part of its reasoning may be embraced without criticism, the core arguments of the decision…
Running from 29 October 2021 to 7 January 2022, the “Artificial Intelligence and IP: copyright and patents” consultation formed the latest round in an ongoing national conversation between the UK Intellectual Property Office (UKIPO) and interested stakeholders (see here). The consultation sought views on the prospects for facilitating patent and copyright protections for “inventions…
Introduction When we launched the Copyright Evidence Portal, our ambition was no less than to create a catalogue of all existing empirical studies about copyright. This ambition, and the resulting huge body of work (over 850 studies), inspired us to think about new ways to interpret this empirical literature, and to offer a state-of-the-art overview…
In 2015, the Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property (PIJIP) set out to conduct empirical research on the impact of copyright exceptions. We felt that there was a shortage of papers demonstrating the benefits of exceptions for users of protected works. We soon realized that information about the changes to copyright law over time…
There has been widespread press coverage of Meghan Markle’s (the Duchess of Sussex) recent success in a claim which she brought against the publishers of the Daily Mail, Mail on Sunday and the Mail Online website (“the Mail”). In February 2021, the High Court granted Ms Markle summary judgment on her claim for misuse of…
On 29 October 2021, the UK Intellectual Property Office launched a public consultation looking at how the copyright and patent regimes should deal with artificial intelligence. The UKIPO underlines the crucial role played by AI when it comes to innovation and creativity. With this consultation, the Office seeks to assess whether the current IP…
Parts 1 and 2 of this post (originally published in “Auteurs & Media”) summarising case law of the German Bundesgerichtshof from 2015 to 2019 are available here and here, and part 4 will be published on the blog shortly. IV. Related rights In addition to rights of the author, German copyright law also recognises…
Promoting research and access to its products has always been a core purpose of copyright law, often expressed in limitations and exceptions for research uses. Recent legal scholarship has examined the need for copyright exceptions for text and data mining (TDM) methodologies, and the doctrines recently enacted to achieve this purpose. Empirical scholarship has highlighted…
Earlier this year, Creative Commons announced that four working groups of the Creative Commons Copyright Platform would examine policy issues affecting the open ecosystem from a global perspective: (1) artificial intelligence and open content; (2) platform liability; (3) copyright exceptions and limitations; and (4) the ethics of open sharing. The CC Copyright Platform was established as a…
For most of its existence, international copyright policy at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) has focused on the creation and harmonization of exclusive rights. This state of play was only disrupted in 2004, when Chile first proposed to WIPO’s Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (SCCR) that it explore the issue of limitations…
