For most of its existence, international copyright policy at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) has focused on the creation and harmonization of exclusive rights. This state of play was only disrupted in 2004, when Chile first proposed to WIPO’s Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (SCCR) that it explore the issue of limitations…
Earlier this week, the European Commission published a recommendation for a common European data space for cultural heritage. As Executive Vice-President for A Europe Fit for the Digital Age, Margrethe Vestager, explained, “[t]he tragic burning of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris showed the importance of digitally preserving culture and the lockdowns highlighted the need for…
Let’s imagine that, in the near future, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) receives a request for a preliminary ruling referring the following question: “Must Article 17(4) of Directive 2019/790 on copyright and related rights in the Digital Single Market be interpreted as precluding a national law which allows copyright holders to bring…
To ensure you don’t miss out on interesting IP law developments reported on our other IP blogs, we will, on a regular basis, provide you with an overview of the most-read posts from each of our IP law blogs. Here are the most popular posts over the past few months. Top 3 Kluwer Copyright Blog…
On 21st October 2021, Facebook announced that it has reached an agreement with APIG, an association of French press publishers, committing itself to the payment of licensing fees pursuant to the press publishers’ right introduced by the 2019 Copyright Directive. According to Facebook’s press release, the agreement “means that people on Facebook will be able…
Although the author worked under the terms of a collective bargaining agreement when he penned the movie, the right to ownership was governed by copyright law and not labor law. The writer of the screenplay for Friday the 13th, the classic summer camp thriller that spawned a generation of equally campy horror films, was entitled to…
De minimis analysis involves the substantiality of the copying, not the use to which the infringing work is put; by definition, wholesale copying of a protected work cannot be de minimis copying. A company that owned a website on which it unknowingly displayed a photographer’s photo without authorization could not assert a de minimis defense…
On the 16th of October 2020, one year ago, a middle-school teacher, Samuel Paty, was beheaded by a terrorist who would not know of his existence if not for a number of videos posted on social media, against which Mr. Paty had filed for defamation with the local police. Yet, a law against publishing heinous…
The UK government has run a consultation on the future of the UK’s exhaustion of IP rights regime. This ran for 12 weeks, closing on 31 August 2021. The consultation was open to responses from businesses, representative organisations, civil society organisations, legal practitioners, creators and consumers. The government is now considering the responses to the…
Heirs of “Game of Life” developer failed to overcome work-for-hire doctrine in bid to terminate developer’s original transfer of rights to Hasbro predecessor. The federal district court in Providence, Rhode Island, correctly determined that heirs of toy developer Bill Markham could not reacquire copyrights to the boardgame “The Game of Life” from Hasbro, Inc., and…
