Background On 8 September 2022, the Brussels court of appeal delivered a long-awaited judgment in a case between the collective management organisation “Belgian Association of Authors, Composers and Publishers” (“SABAM”) and a wide array of music festival organisers in Belgium, the overarching Federation of Music Festivals in Flanders (“FMFF”) and British direct licensing company Pace…

This is a two-part post summarising the authors’ findings from the report on Copyright Infringement in the Video Game Industry which was prepared by the authors for the World Intellectual Property Organization. Part 1 looked at the state of the art of the video game industry, as well as at cloning and cheating. This part…

This is a two-part post summarising the authors’ findings from the report on Copyright Infringement in the Video Game Industry, which was prepared by the authors for the World Intellectual Property Organization. It focusses on the state of the art of the video game industry and the role of IP, in particular copyright, throughout the…

Order no. 2021-580 of 12 May 2021 (‘transposition Order’) of the French Government implements articles 2(6) and 17 to 23 of the EU Directive 2019/790 on copyright and related rights in the Digital Single Market (‘CDSM’). In a ruling of 15 November 2022, the French administrative Supreme Court annulled the transposition Order to the extent that it does…

The removal of SIAE’s repertoire from Meta’s social networks “This song is currently unavailable” or “The audio track in your reel is no longer available. You can replace the audio track once, which will also remove any original audio in your reel”. These are some of the messages appearing on Instagram or Facebook to users…

This blog is a continuation of an earlier Kluwer post ‘Getting paid to play? Copyright, contract, and the rewards for UGC’ and is based on the findings of the You Can Play project.   When does a ‘creative work’ become ‘user generated content’ (UGC)? My recent research on video game UGC policies suggests the thin…

Welcome to the first trimester of the 2023 round up of EU copyright law! In this edition, we report on an AG Opinion that came out late in 2022 and update you on what has happened in the first trimester of 2023 in EU copyright law. This includes Court of Justice (CJEU) and General Court…

This post is based in part on the Position Statement of the Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition of 23 January 2023 on the ‘Design Package’, but expresses the authors’ own personal views.     On 28 November 2022, the EU Commission published proposals for amendment of the Design Regulation and for recast of…

The limitation might have failed in an earlier period, but more recent precedents were more forgiving. Parties to a photo image license were free to contract for a two-year statute of limitations under California law, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has held. The court, in an unpublished opinion, also affirmed a…

In late 2022, the Court of Venice issued an interesting order restraining the use of the image of a well-known piece of Renaissance art by Leonardo da Vinci: the Study of the Proportions of the Human Body in the Manner of Vitruvius, also known as the Vitruvian Man.[1] The artwork is held by the Italian…