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…

“What seems to lack in the decision of the Court, at the end of the day, is a clear test of what constitutes a structural element in the ’embryonic stage’. Last 19 October 2012, the Italian Supreme Court published a decision on a case of plagiarism related to a literary work which told the true…

The French Supreme Court (“Cour de Cassation”) has upheld, in a ruling of 25 September 2012, a judgment of the Court of Appeal of Paris condemning Radioblog and its managing directors to the payment of damages amounting to over €1 million, in addition to a suspended prison sentence of nine months and a €10,000 fine….

The second season of the popular Slovak TV series “Dr. Ludsky” was enjoined from being distributed and communicated to the public after authors of the film treatment filed for a preliminary injunction. Dr. Ludsky is a “Dr. House-style” Slovak series that became quite popular in the last two years. The series as such is based…

“The ECJ does not go as far as the Advocate General, and observes that given the ubiquitous nature of the content of a website, the mere fact that the website is accessible in a national territory is not sufficient to consider that the operator of that site is performing an act of re-utilisation caught by…

“According to the current formulation of the draft law, material quoted by humans for commentary and analysis, as opposed to that automatically selected by a computer, may be copied freely.” The link wars have once again broken out in Europe. In August, the German cabinet gave its backing to a draft law allowing news publishers…

On January 5, 2011, representatives of ACAPOR (a Portuguese association representing commercial retailers of cultural and entertainment works), wearing t-shirts with the slogans “piracy is illegal” and “1000 complaints per month”, filed a petition with the Prosecutor General’s Office (“PGO”) giving notice of the practice of 1000 acts of alleged usurpation of authors’ rights via…

“The Polish Parliament is of the opinion the draft proposal does not adequately explain why these goals can be “better” realised on the EU level. “ Friday, October 12th 2012 was packed with action in the Polish Parliament (Sejm), because on that day the prime minister subject his government to the vote of confidence and…

The “Arco” lamp is protected by copyright. But Italy is still struggling with the moratorium of the copyright protection of industrial design. With a 56-pages decision of the District Court of Milan published on 12 September 2012 and made available last week, the “Arco” lamp case, started as far back as 2006, has finally come…