As 2020 unfolds, the European Commission’s stakeholder dialogue pursuant to Article 17 of the Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market (CDSM directive) enters its third (and likely final) phase. After four meetings that focussed on gathering “an overview of the current market situation as regards licensing practices, tools used for online content management…
While EU Member States are trying to implement the press publishers’ right (also known as ‘link tax’) that was recently introduced in Art 15 of the Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market (DSM Directive), Australia is only just starting its policy debate on this highly contested topic. Australian media companies (or ‘press publishers’)…
As we enter a new year, we would like to take this opportunity to pass on our best wishes for 2020 to all of our readers, as well as reflect on developments in copyright over the past year. Last year was another busy one in the copyright world, with a number of landmark CJEU decisions,…
1. Italian Case Law on Fast Injunctions The impact of the illegal distribution of audiovisual content is growing (see, for Italy, the report issued in 2019 by FAPAV Federation for the protection of audiovisual and multimedia content). IP enforcement is an important part of the reaction against this illegal phenomenon. In 2019, some important improvements…
Factual questions precluded deciding novel legal issues regarding the scope of MMA’s preemption of state-law infringement claims involving pre-1972 sound recordings and whether Pandora qualified for the preemption defense. The U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco has returned a case to the federal district court in Los Angeles to consider in the first instance…
Relying on obviously insufficient oversight mechanisms for discovering copyright infringement can constitute willful infringement. A California district court erred when it reduced a $460,800 jury verdict by $109,700 for lack of proof of willful infringement in a copyright infringement suit by Greg Young Publishing, Inc., against online marketplace Zazzle because recklessness can constitute willful infringement,…
On 17 September 2019, the Paris Court of First Instance (“court”) delivered its judgment in the dispute between UFC-Que Choisir (“UFC”), a consumer organisation, and a videogame distribution platform operated by Valve. Among other issues, the court was asked to decide whether subscribers to Valve’s platform should be allowed to resell videogames purchased digitally. The…
The recent decision in Warner Music & another v TuneIn Inc [2019] EWHC 2923 (ch), was the first time the English Courts have forensically assessed the implications of CJEU decisions such as GS Media and Svensson on communication to the public over the internet. Many of us have been left bemused by the concepts the…
The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) defines the principle of cumulative protection under the systems for protection of designs and of works, in order to clarify the circumstances in which designs and models may additionally be considered a “work” and be entitled to the protection conferred by copyright under the InfoSoc Directive….
Copyright’s underuse hypothesis is simple: that, unless publishers are assured of exclusive rights in older works, they won’t continue to invest in making them available. This of course contradicts a core tenet of classical economic theory, that investors will continue to produce copies of books (or anything else) so long as they can expect to…
