Austria, Authorship, Case Law, Distribution (right of), European Union, Jurisdiction, Remuneration (equitable)

(European Audiovisual Observatory )/ /1 Comment

On 6 September 2011, General Advocate Verica Trstenjak released her Opinion on case C-277/10 (the original German version of the Opinion is available here, other language versions here). The case deals a.o. with the controversial cessio legis provision of the Austrian Urheberrechtsgesetz (Copyright Act – UrhG). According to this provision included in Art. 38(1) UrhG,…

Authorship, Infringement, Italy, Jurisdiction

/ /Leave a comment

The Tribunal of Rome has rejected the appeal brought by Reti Televisive Italiane (RTI, Mediaset Group) and Endemol, respectively the broadcaster and the producer of the Mediaset TV program “Baila!”, against the first instance decision in the urgent proceeding for provisional measures of the same court, holding that the program was an unauthorized copy of…

Authorship, Case Law, Poland

(Institute of Intellectual Property Law, Jagiellonian University Kraków)/ /Leave a comment

There are many interesting ways one may become a co-author of a copyright work, but in one of its recent decisions the Polish Supreme Court seems to have added a new and quite interesting option. You can namely become a co-author if you delete a few sentences from a scientific article, sentences you believe are…

Case Law, Exhaustion, Jurisdiction, United Kingdom

(Institute for Information Law (IViR))/ /Leave a comment

In its groundbreaking judgment of 4 October 2011 the Court of Justice of the European Union has essentially legalized the import, sale and use of foreign satellite television decoder cards. The judgment, which was given in two joined (originally British) cases, concerned decoder cards that provide access to encrypted satellite transmissions from Greece of British…

Legislative process, Performers' Rights

(University of Cyprus)/ /Leave a comment

11 years have passed since the last attempt of WIPO to promote an Audiovisual Performance Treaty which would bring the performer’s protection to meet the challenges of the digital era. The path to the adoption of such a Treaty seems to be prima facie open after the WIPO’s General Assembly Decision of 30th of September…

Belgium, Case Law, Enforcement, Exceptions and Limitations, Infringement, Liability, Making available (right of), Remedies, Technological measures

(Marx, Van Ranst, Vermeersch & Partners)/ /Leave a comment

This sentence summarizes quite well the decision of the Antwerp Court of Appeal of 26 September 2011 which it is abstracted from. The Belgian Anti-piracy Federation filed a cease and desist action against Telenet and Belgacom, two Belgian ISPs, in order to make them block The Pirate Bay’s websites in their respective networks. In first…

Belgium, Case Law, Enforcement, Infringement, Remedies

(Marx, Van Ranst, Vermeersch & Partners)/ /Leave a comment

In this post, I would like to come back to an interesting decision of the Belgian Cour de Cassation of 7 October 2010, which confirmed that a cease and desist action could be successfully sought against a copyright licensee. As usual, the Supreme Court’s decision is quite concise and does not extensively detail the facts….

Authorship, Case Law, Collective management, Legislative process

(Department of Business Law, Lund University)/ /Leave a comment

In the presence of Michel Barnier, European Commissioner for the Internal Market and Services, a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was signed yesterday between European libraries, publishers, authors, and their collecting societies. The MoU comprises a set of key principles that will give European libraries and similar cultural institutions the possibility to digitize and make available…

Case Law, Portugal, Subject matter (copyrightable)

(Maastricht University)/ /Leave a comment

On 30 June 2011, the Lisbon Court of Appeals has issued its decision in case 323/07.8TVLSB.L1-2 (unfortunately there is no English translation of this). The facts of the case are as follows: a company wanted to hire an artist to create a sculpture, and for that purpose it received a few proposals from different artists….

Case Law, Duration, Legislative process

(Department of Business Law, Lund University)/ /Leave a comment

As highlighted in a previous post by one of my fellow Kluwer Copyright bloggers, and others, a proposal by the European Commission for a directive on an extension of the term of protection for fixations of performances and for phonograms to 70 years after the recording (from current 50 years) has recently been brought back…