What is and what is not a copyright work is a question even copyright lawyers find difficult to answer when confronted with subject matter on the verge of the required standard of originality. Polish copyright law has quite a long tradition of setting the threshold rather low, which may encourage frivolous lawsuits forcing courts to…
In case C 393/09, the ECJ decided that a GUI is not a form of expression of a computer program and cannot therefore be protected by copyright as a computer program under Directive 91/250/EEC. Indeed, that directive protects the forms of expression of a computer program and the preparatory design work capable of leading, respectively,…
Due to massive lobbying of the German press publishers, the new conservative-liberal German Government declared in its coalition contract in late 2009: “Press Publishers shall not be discriminated against other disseminators of copyright protected works [e.g. film or music producers]. Therefore we aim at the introduction of a neighbouring right for press publishers to increase…
Football listings have hit the UK again, this time with an “original” twist.Disputes surrounding football lists never seem to go out of fashion. On 9 December 2010, the High Court yet again was faced with issues of IP protection of football listings and other related statistical football information, subject matter somewhere on the borderline between…
