As promised in an earlier contribution, I will provide a more reasoned exploration of the Swedish proposal to Article 17 DSM Directive in view of the fact that the Ministry of Justice did not opt for the copy-paste implementation technique. In this first post, out of two, I will address the proposed liability regime. The…
Original Beauty Technology Company Limited & others v G4K Fashion Limited & others, [2021] EWHC 3439 (Ch) The High Court has recently awarded £450,000 in damages to a successful claimant in a dispute about unregistered design rights in clothing. Unregistered design rights in the UK are a unique right that often catch designs that fall…
Introduction By introducing the press publishers’ right in art. 15 of the Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market (CDSM), the EU legislator wanted to aid press publishers in licensing and enforcing their rights in press publications. The hope was that once press publishers are recognized as rightsholders in the EU legislation, their legal…
On March 10th, 2022, the Advocate General (AG) Pitruzzella delivered his Opinion on the case RTL Television GmbH v Grupo Pestana S.G.P.S., S.A., et al (C-716/20). The case is an ideal example of the intricacy of the EU copyright law edifice regarding the right of communication to the public, which appears as a patchwork of…
Welcome to the first trimester of the 2022 round up of EU copyright law! We started this rubric back in 2021. In this series, we update readers every three months on developments in EU copyright law. This includes Court of Justice (CJEU) and General Court judgments, Advocate Generals’ (AG) opinions, and important policy developments. You…
This post is the second instalment of an analysis of the ‘very short extracts’ (VSE) carve-out to the press publishers’ right set forth in Article 15 of the CDSM Directive. The first part examined the legal nature of the VSE rule, concluding that it ought to be qualified not as an ‘exception’, but as a…
By now, Article 15 of Directive (EU) 2019/790 on copyright and related rights in the Digital Single Market (CDSM Directive) needs no wordy introductions. Put briefly, the provision requires Member States to introduce a related (or neighbouring) right for press publishers, applicable to online uses of their publications. By extending the rights of reproduction and…
On 8 February 2022, the Italian Supreme Court (the Corte di Cassazione) issued an order that intervened on the interpretation of the quotation exception under Article 70 of the Italian Copyright Act (l.aut.).[1] While the outcome was foreseeable and great part of its reasoning may be embraced without criticism, the core arguments of the decision…
In the recent case of Estonian Performers Union (EEL) v vs. MTÜ Urban Style, the Estonian Supreme Court examined the circumstances that should be taken into account in determining the amount of the equitable remuneration that phonogram producers and performers are entitled to claim if a phonogram published for commercial purposes or a reproduction thereof…
Europol and the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) have recently jointly published an Intellectual Property Crime Threat Assessment. This report explores piracy and counterfeiting and is based on data from across the EU as well as Europol’s operational information. The report concludes that piracy and counterfeiting continue to pose a serious threat to the…
