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…

International Agreement, USA

(Schulich School of Law )/ /Leave a comment

The global intellectual property landscape has witnessed important changes in recent years. Most notably, the public interest dimension of intellectual property has emerged as a paramount concern. Though there seems to be a fairly broad agreement on the need for a more balanced intellectual property system which effectively promotes innovation, views diverge on how to…

Case Law, Collective management, Distribution (right of), Making available (right of)

/ /Leave a comment

Court of Appeal The Hague, 28 June 2011,  Stichting Leenrecht v. VOB Lending rights. Plaintiff, the Dutch Association for Lending Rights, argues that an extended loan of library books should be considered a new loan and that therefore public lending rights are due. The Court of Appeal The Hague disagrees and concludes by referring to…

Enforcement, Infringement, Liability

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

In a recently announced Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with music and film industry associations, U.S. Internet service providers (ISPs) have agreed to take voluntary action against online piracy. In essence, the MoU establishes a multi-stage model (“graduated response”) that begins with email alerts, and which may end up with bandwidth reductions or limitations in web…

Exceptions and Limitations, Legislative process, Private copying, United Kingdom

(Centre for Commercial Law Studies at Queen Mary, University of London)/ /Leave a comment

[By Dr Luke McDonagh} The UK Government’s response to the Hargreaves’ Review includes the approval of a number of THE reports recommendations, the main ones being the acceptance of the need for a new procedure to clear and license orphan works, and the acceptance that some form of Digital Copyright Exchange is required. With regard…

European Union

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

Territorial licensing of media content has for some time now been a painful stumbling block in the realization of the EU’s ambitious vision for a common, European-wide audiovisual market. One, if not the most important reason why online audiovisual viewers are continuously reminded that the internet is not as borderless as they thought it was…