In the appeal of a case concerning allegations of infringement of IP rights in live football statistics sites, the Court of Appeal rejected the claimant’s copyright claim, affirming the high standard of subsistence in a database under Article 3(1) which must go beyond ‘mere data’ to involve some ‘creative skill’. Concerning the sui generis right,…

Kitchin J granted an order for security for costs under rule 24.6 CPR against the claimant in a copyright infringement case. While remaining sensitive to the right of access to the court of the claimant and acknowledging that security for costs should only rarely be ordered solely where the case appears weak, the judge considered…

By Gaetano Dimita The football data clashes continue. This time, the Court of Appeals decided to bring an important aspect of the Dataco case (as mentioned here) to the attention of the Court of Justice: Hearing the appeal and cross appeal on Football Dataco Ltd, The Scottish Premier League Limited, The Scottish Football League Limited…

By Luke McDongagh, PhD Candidate, QMIPRI The Irish Times has recently reported that the Joyce estate has, after many years of refusal, finally granted the English singer Kate Bush permission to use the famous Molly Bloom soliloquy from James Joyce’s seminal novel Ulysses as the lyrical basis for a song. The soliloquy, spoken at the…

It cannot have evaded the notice of anyone interested in copyright matters that Judge Chin at a New York federal district court recently has rejected the so-called Google Book Settlement (GBS). While holding that “the digitization of books and the creation of a universal digital library would benefit many”, Judge Chin argued that the GBS…

As a follow up to my previous post on the Google decisions, I am presenting a recent report issued by two senators (Mr. Laurent Béteille and Mr. Richard Yung) on the application of the anti-counterfeiting law (loi n. 2007-1544 of 29 October 2007 de lutte contre la contrefaçon). The report contains 18 recommendations aimed at…

The Communications Authority proposal to have a leading role in the protection of copyright on electronic communication networks (as explained in its Resolution 668/10/CONS commented in the previous post) has provoked opposite reactions from copyright owners on one side and supporters of major ISPs on the other side. The Italian federation for the protection against…

The use of a photograph of a politician with a child, in combination with a satirical text, in a self-advertisement of a news magazine, is not covered by the freedom of satire when the satire does not concern daily political events but is merely commercially self-serving. Furthermore, the implication of a political relationship between the…

In this decision the Court of Cassation confirmed that Dailymotion was an online intermediary provider, who did not intervene in the content and choice of videos posted by users on its platform. In addition, the commercial exploitation of the website through the sale of advertising spaces did not induce that Dailymotion could intervene on the…

As mentioned in a previous post, on 22 March 2011 the Spanish Audiencia Nacional (High Court) annulled for formal reasons the Spanish ordinance that determines which digital reproduction equipment and media are subject to the private copying levies. The ordinance had been challenged before the Spanish courts by the Asociación de Internautas (an Internet users’…