Despite the increasing use of streaming services, where media content is not stored on local devices, but merely accessed online, the private copying exception (Art 5(2)(b) InfoSoc Directive) remains at the center of European jurisprudence.  In the Austro-Mechana v. Strato case, the Austrian courts have to decide whether the remuneration for private copying must also be…

On 30 December 2022, the Italian Supreme Court (Corte di Cassazione) issued an order that intervened again on the interpretation of the quotation exception under Article 70 of the Italian Copyright Act (l. 633/1941, l.aut.). The decision concerns an advertising campaign of a mineral water company. The commercial video promoting the mineral water features a…

In August 2020, a review of the Orphan Works Directive (2012/28/EU), or OWD, was initiated by the European Commission. The study concluded that the OWD has had limited practical impact, but the European Commission has not proposed any modifications to the Directive. This post provides a short introduction to the OWD, an overview of the…

The European Commission has referred six Member States (Bulgaria, Denmark, Finland, Latvia, Poland and Portugal) to the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) for failure to notify complete transposition measures on copyright in the Digital Single Market (Directive (EU) 2019/790) (CDSM Directive). This follows its decision last year to send reasoned opinions to 13…

Pastiche is one of the newer harmonized user rights in EU copyright law. The exception for caricature, parody and pastiche was made mandatory as part of Article 17 of the Copyright in the Digital Single Market Directive (CDSMD) in 2019. Although the implementation deadline passed in 2021, several Member States have yet to transpose the…

Launched in January 2020, the H2020 project reCreating Europe (Rethinking digital copyright law for a culturally diverse, accessible, creative Europe), is pleased to announce its final conference, which will take place in Brussels on 21-22 March 2023. Day 1 will take place at the Royal Belgian Museum of Natural Sciences, while Day 2 will be…

Introductory remarks The Greek legislator transposed Directive (EU) 2019/790 (CDSMD) with considerable delay, enacting L. 4996/2022 in November 2022 (ΦΕΚ Α´ 2022/24.11.2022), which amended the basic Greek Copyright Law (L. 2121/1993 on “Copyright, Related Rights and Cultural Matters”) as well as L. 4481/2017 on “Collective Management of Copyright and Related Rights” (ΦΕΚ Α’ 100/20.7.2017). Among…

A series of recent amendments to copyright law, including in the EU Copyright and the Digital Single Market Directive (Art. 3 and 4) and in Singapore’s new Copyright Act (Art. 243, 244), seek to protect the ability of text and data mining researchers to use copyrighted content in their work. “Text and data mining” (“TDM”)…

This post is based in part on an amicus brief filed by the Harvard Cyberlaw Clinic on behalf of Authors Alliance and ComicMix before the United States Supreme Court in Jack Daniels v. VIP Products. Ordinarily, authors who write parodies look to copyright limitations and exceptions to protect their rights. In the United States, the…