High Court Chancery Division, 3 February 2012, Football Association Premier League v QC Leisure. Further to a referral to the ECJ on, inter alia, the meaning of “communication to the public” under art. 3 of the Directive 2001/29 (Case C-403/83), the High Court ruled that the showing of broadcasts (football matches) via television screens and…
Patents Court London, 19 January 2012, Hoffman v Drug Abuse Resistance Education. A charity infringed copyright in photographs by including them in its website withouth the author’s permission. The fact that the charity was under a good-faith impression that it had permission to use the photographs, as they appeared in a website that was covered…
The clouds of dust raised by the turbulent discussion about ACTA in Poland seem to be slowly settling and the time has come to make some evaluations. What has happened with ACTA in Poland has surely caught the attention of the world (or at least Europe), but perhaps the scale of it is still underestimated….
This entry deals with some aspects of the decision by order by the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) in Case C-302/10 (Infopaq II) on 17 January. The reference for a preliminary ruling was brought to the CJEU by the Danish Supreme Court and concerns the interpretation of Article 5(1) and 5(5) of…
Secrecy might be the new black for the ones using it. However, the rules introduced by the Lisbon Treaty and the rising public awareness of the need for transparency might mean that such fashion will be outdated soon in Europe. In the last couple of years, relevant laws and international agreements in the field of…
On December 21, 2011 the Lithuanian Parliament adopted the overhaul of the levy system, along with other important amendments in the copyright law. While many countries in Europe are considering phase-out or replacement of blank media and equipment levy systems, Lithuania has significantly expanded it. Historically copyright levies were introduced in Lithuania on January 1,…
We are experiencing a new trend by Italian first instance courts in addressing the issue of liability of hosting providers for contents posted by users in copyright infringement cases. The new approach is likely to impose providers of video sharing platforms (such as YouTube, Dailymotion and others) dramatic changes in their model of business, with…
by Linda Scales, solicitor, Dublin. A copyright controversy has been raging in Ireland this week. The SOPA/PIPA debate fuelled fears that an unpublished piece of secondary legislation would provide a regime similar to that proposed in the US. The Irish instrument was labelled “Ireland’s SOPA”, even though no one knew what the document contained. In…
On the first week of January, media and blogs extensively reported about a Slovak ruling of the Regional Court in Bratislava, which denied copyright protection on newspaper articles. In fact, the court assessed only three articles submitted as evidence, and of course, did not deny copyright protection in general. On the other hand, it quite…
It has been brought to attention, by traditional media and by bloggers, that the Missionary Church of Kopimism (pronounced “copy me-ism”) has recently been recognized as a religious organization by Sweden’s Legal, Financial and Administrative Services Agency (Kammarkollegiet). The registration has made Sweden the first country to recognize Kopimism as a religion. According to its…
