Earlier this year, the Italian Supreme Court (Corte di Cassazione) issued an order (Cass., ord. no.11413/2024) in a case concerning the protection by copyright of a lamp design. Part I of this post outlined the decisions issued as the case made its way through the Italian court system. Part II will now turn to the…

Generative AI (GenAI) is promising to revolutionise higher education. Whether it concerns legal scholars using ChatGPT to write their essays, computer science majors relying on GitHub Copilot to generate programming code, or art students turning to Midjourney to create visual artistry: the relevant AI tools to assist with educational assignments are readily available online. The…

The AI Law Proposal: general context and subject matter     On 23 April 2024, the Italian government published the text of a draft law introducing regulatory provisions concerning the use of Artificial Intelligence systems to the Italian legal system (“AI Law Proposal”) (here). The text has been approved by the Council of Ministers and…

In July 2023, the Court of Appeal in Wright & Ors v BTC Core & Ors [2023] EWCA Civ 868. overturned the High Court decision in which Mr Justice Mellor found that the Bitcoin File Format (the “BFF”) was not a protectable work in a copyright sense as it did not satisfy the fixation requirement…

The rise in popularity of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) has attracted a great deal of attention from copyright practitioners and aficionados. And why is that? Basically, because an NFT is an encoded digital metadata file of a copy of a work that can be copyright protected. That is, in an NFT there can be an underlying…

On 19 March 2024, the Court of Appeal handed down its decision on the appeal in the Lidl v Tesco case ([2024] EWCA Civ 262), holding as follows.   First instance (High Court) decision Court of Appeal ruling Copyright infringement Overturned (appeal allowed) Trade mark infringement Upheld (appeal dismissed) Passing off Upheld (appeal dismissed) Trade…

The Austrian Supreme Court (hereinafter: “ASC”) ruled on 19th of December 2023 (4 Ob 112/23h) in a case concerning the 2019 film “Yesterday”. The Plaintiff alleged that the film infringed its copyright in a short screenplay idea published in 2011. The First Defendant distributes the film “Yesterday” to Austrian cinemas. The Second Defendant is responsible…

Tackling the blurred lines between counterfeiting and ingenuity in the art world is certainly not an easy endeavor. Indeed, in a world where “nothing is lost, nothing is created, everything is transformed“, it is a rather daunting exercise for any court to draw the line between inspiration and imitation in copyrighted works, let alone in…

  The Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Act 2023 (REULA) came into force on 1 January 2024 and has some significant implications for IP law. Much IP law in the UK is derived from EU law – both implemented EU law and case law decided in view of EU law. REULA could impact all…

New year’s fatigue? Or possibly AI fatigue? But the new year has only just begun! It does seem like the topic of AI and copyright was everywhere in the copyright world last year. While some digital topics have been known to cause a great commotion in copyright circles only to later sink practically without a…