In Anglosphere nations, the rights of creators are governed almost entirely by their contracts with investors. The US and Canada have the only (small) exceptions: US law entitles creators to terminate (most) agreements after 35 years; in Canada, rights revert automatically to heirs 25 years after the author’s death. Outside those cases, and throughout the…
On 28 March 2019, the German Federal Court (BGH) was asked to review a lower court’s decision on the legality of the unauthorised uploading of the 30 day free trial version of Microsoft software on an online trader’s website. This gave the BGH the chance to further clarify the applicability of the German Copyright Act…
Here we have it. The first instance of regulatory divergence. The UK is leaving the European Union, and already the rules of the single market are starting to break. In response to a parliamentary question by Labour MP Jo Stevens, Intellectual Property Minister Chris Skidmore said on 21 January that the UK Government had no…
Part I of this post provided an overview of the facts of the case and the recent opinion of AG Campos Sanchez-Bordona. Overall, the opinion is a mixed result. It makes some good points but also some ill-judged ones, and these will be explored in more detail in this post. Let us start with the positive…
This case concerned the famous Brompton bicycle which can be folded to carry away after use (Case C‑833/18, SI, Brompton Bicycle Ltd. v. Chedech / Get2Get). The bike was once protected by a patent and, following its expiry, the defendant (Chedech/Get2Get) embarked on selling a similar bike in Belgium (the designs of the two bikes…
In Response Clothing Ltd v The Edinburgh Woollen Mill Ltd [2020] EWHC 148, His Honour Judge Hacon (“HHJ Hacon”) found that copyright subsisted in a fabric design as a work of artistic craftmanship and that the sale of garments made from such fabric amounted to copyright infringement. The case is an interesting development in English law…
Hospital infringed on credentialing service’s copyright by using forms, but the infringement began when the forms were not yet registered. A medical credentialing support service is barred from recovering statutory damages and attorney’s fees for a hospital’s use of its credentialing forms after their relationship ended, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit…
Part I of this post discussed the current position of host providers and the changes that will be brought about by Article 17. Part II addresses the major problems in relation to Article 17 and how it should be implemented to try and minimize these. The host provider privilege as a safeguard for a diverse…
On July 6, the EU adopted the Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market (DSM Directive), following heated discussions of Articles 15 (formerly 11) and 17 (formerly 13) in particular. In Germany, tens of thousands of people took to the streets to demonstrate against the planned legislation in the lead-up to the vote in the European Parliament…
Ed Sheeran’s ‘Shape of You’ was a giant hit of the last decade, a runaway success story – well almost. There is a fly in the ointment. Sami Chokri (a.k.a. Sami Switch) is claiming Sheeran and his fellow songwriters infringed his copyright, copying part of the chorus of ‘Oh Why’. You can hear the two…
