In the midst of the economic and social paralysis arising from the COVID 19 pandemic, the tireless discipline of law has prevailed as always, if anything with increased activity. The Beijing Treaty on Audiovisual Performances (BTAP, hereinafter the “Treaty”) came into force on 28 April 2020 in the first thirty contracting parties (the minimum number…

To mark the deadline for the national implementation of the Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market (CDSMD) and present the mid-term results of its cross-disciplinary and transnational research, the Horizon 2020 project reCreating Europe is organising the web conference “The implementation of the CDSM Directive: snapshots into the future of EU copyright law”,…

Although the legal consequences of infringement of different IP rights (e.g. copyright, trademarks and patents) are in principle identically regulated in Austria by the corresponding laws, the requirements for protection and acts of exploitation reserved to the proprietor, which are adapted to the market conditions, are fundamentally different depending on the type of IP right….

As reported in a previous blog post, the Australian government has been intensively negotiating the Australian version of the press publishers’ right, the News Media Bargaining Code. The legislation was initially proposed in July 2020 and, following tough negotiations with industry stakeholders, the slightly amended News Media Bargaining Code was eventually passed by the Australian…

In AsDAV v Republic of Moldova the Second Section of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) held that the uncompensated use of works by a public authority constitutes a violation of Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 to the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). The ECtHR found that the Moldovan Supreme Court had…

As I posted previously on this blog (here), French press publishers’ unions and the news agency Agence France Presse (‘AFP’) filed a successful request for an interim injunction against Google before the French Competition Authority, in their battle to obtain remuneration for online uses of their publications (Decision 20-MC-01 of 9 April 2020). Google had been manoeuvring…

The European Copyright Society (ECS) has issued a series of insightful Comments on the implementation of the CDSM Directive’s provisions, which aim to serve as guidelines for policy options for the implementation of the Directive in the Member States. Part I of this post outlined the Comments on the implementation of Articles 8 and 12,…

Overview After fierce lobbying, European press publishers, backed by the French government, obtained the much criticized press publishers’ right (see e.g. here; here; and here) in Article 15 of Directive (EU) 2019/790 on copyright and related rights in the Digital Single Market (CDSM Directive). The objective of this new right is to allow the media…

Earlier this month, the Constitutional Tribunal of the Republic of Poland issued a long-awaited judgment on the assessment of constitutionality of Article 79(1)(3)(b) of the Copyright and Related Rights Act (judgment of 5 November 2019, reference no. P 14/19). This provision entitles the entity whose copyright has been infringed to demand from the infringer a…

In Part I of this two-part post on Chapter 3 of the new Copyright Directive, I argued that Articles 18-23 were well-intentioned. It is now up to Member States to send clear signals of support to their creative community by not rendering these provisions ineffective. In addition, while there is ample opportunity to harmonise creator-protective…