In its recent judgement in the Auto24.ee-case, the Estonian Supreme Court established that an authors’ agreement for assigning economical copyrights is deemed to be signed when the user of database accepts the general conditions imposed by the database owner. According to Article 49(1) of the Estonian Copyright Act though, an author’s contract shall be entered into in…
One of the recent judgements of the Polish Supreme Court provides a good opportunity to review the basic rules applying to copyright contracts in Poland. The Polish copyright law treats copyright contracts in a rather strict and formal way. It specifically states that both assignment and license contracts only cover the co-called fields of exploitation…
The question, whether software licences for computer programs that were purchased in an intangible form (via download from the sellers’ server) can be resold by the first acquirer and used by the second buyer without consent of the right holder, has to be interpreted in light of the computer program directive 2009/24/EG. A full summary…
The commented decision may at first glance appear to be of limited importance only, but after closer examination it contains two interesting points of more general significance. The basic facts are the following: the plaintiff, a collecting society ZAIKS, brought a claim against two companies demanding payment for selling copies of the film “Rejs” (“Cruise”),…
The variation of the Austrian National Anthem by setting it to a modernised “rock-version” of the classic tune and by changing the line “You are home to great sons” to “You are home to great sons and daughters” for use in an information campaign by the Austrian Federal Ministry for Education, Arts and Culture, does…
Bankruptcy brings always its share of bad surprises, and it usually gets dodgier when intellectual property is involved… In this post, we propose a review of a decision of the Belgian Supreme Court illustrating this observation in the software development sector. We will start with the legal provisions applied by the Court and its decision…
In its arrest of 3 June 2010, the Supreme Court of Belgium decided that the presumption of transfer to the employer of patrimonial copyrights in a program created within an employment relationship, does does not apply in a situation where a program is developed by the statutory manager of a limited liability company. Click here…
