This blog looks at Article 15 of the (Directive on Copyright in the Single Digital Market (CDSM Directive), the press publishers’ right. Article 15, as regular readers of this blog will recall from this, and this, and this, and this post, creates a right ancillary to copyright that benefits some publishers. It is triggered when…

This blog looks at Article 15 of the (Directive on Copyright in the Single Digital Market (CDSM Directive), the press publishers’ right. Article 15, as regular readers of this blog will recall from this, and this, and this, and this post, creates a right ancillary to copyright that benefits some publishers. It is triggered when…

This post is the second installment of a synopsis of the doctoral thesis the author defended at Universidade Católica Portuguesa on 25 September 2020. The thesis was recently published by Kluwer Law International, as part of its Information Law Series. The first part of this post has established the need to reform the InfoSoc framework…

This post is the first instalment of a synopsis of the doctoral thesis the author defended at Universidade Católica Portuguesa (Lisbon) on 25 September 2020. The thesis was recently published by Kluwer Law International, as part of its Information Law Series.   Copyright exceptions fine-tune the reach of authors’ exclusive rights. They treat as non-infringing…

In May 2019 right after the adoption of the Copyright in the Digital Single Market Directive, the Polish Government initiated a legal challenge before the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) requesting the annulment of (parts of) Article 17. The Polish challenge claims that the application of the filtering obligations contained in Article…

Part I of this post introduced the recent emergence of Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs), explained their basic characteristics and what they can represent. In this Part II we discuss copyright law aspects of NFTs, with a focus on the EU copyright acquis.   Where Copyright Law meets Blockchain As anticipated by the examples in Part I…

From relative obscurity only a few months back, public awareness of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) has risen dramatically. This has come about following their use in connection with the transaction of different types of digital content (including artworks), often for exorbitant amounts. The constant online news stream on NFTs is hard to miss, as illustrated by…

The decade-long titanic battle between Oracle and Google over whether copyright law forbids unlicensed reimplementations of parts of the Java Application Program Interface (API) in a smartphone platform is finally over. In a blockbuster opinion for a 6-2 majority for the U.S. Supreme Court, Justice Stephen Breyer decisively supported Google’s fair use defense. The biggest…

Finding that the government edicts doctrine covers legislative works, Court holds that Georgia’s annotations are inherently public domain material because they are authored by an arm of the legislature in the course of its official duties. In a 5-4 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court has held that the annotations in the Official Code of Georgia…

Until recently, the French police’s handling of the yellow vest (gilets jaunes) demonstrations was ‘only’ criticized for excessive use of force (notably by the UN Human Rights Council). The “disproportionate” police behaviour was substantiated by extensive video footage recorded by protesters. To avoid videos of their agents’ interventions being shared on social networks, however, the…