Readers in Europe and around the world may have heard some refreshingly contented murmurings recently about a new—and, “miraculously, an eminently sensible”—copyright policy report coming out of Canada. The report of the Standing Committee on Industry, Science & Technology, released earlier this month, was the culmination of a statutorily mandated parliamentary review of Canada’s Copyright…
This post is part of a series on the new Directive (EU) 2019/790 on copyright and related rights in the Digital Single Market (CDSM Directive). Part I of this post discussed the legislative process and Titles I through III of the CDSM Directive. This Part II will tackle the remainder of the Directive, namely its…
The Digital Single Market is a widely shared aspiration. The recently adopted copyright reform is one of the EU’s central interventions to re-arrange online creative markets. The expectation is that the newly created rules will facilitate fairer attribution of value where it is due. Since the narrative behind the legislation was dramatic, the expectations are…
In a letter dated 29 March 2019, the President of the CSPLA (‘Conseil supérieur de la propriété littéraire et artistique’), an independent body in charge of advising the French Minister of Culture on copyright law, has appointed three public institutions to submit a report on the use of recognition tools for copyright-protected content on online…
The Polish government has filed a complaint against the new DSM Directive, and more specifically against its art. 17. While it will be a long time until the CJ EU issues a decision, the complaint makes it likely that the battle for the rules on intermediary liability is not over; it has just been moved…
This is the first post of a series on the new Directive (EU) 2019/790 on copyright and related rights in the Digital Single Market. On 17 May 2019 the official version of the new Directive (EU) 2019/790 on copyright and related rights in the Digital Single Market was published in the Official Journal of the…
In December, we set out our views on what would happen to copyright in the UK following Brexit – see here. This blog is intended to provide an update in light of more recent events. On 15 January 2019, the House of Commons voted to reject the draft Withdrawal Agreement. The Withdrawal Agreement had provided…
The operator of a YouTube channel criticizing the pastor of a church was not entitled to punitive damages in a malicious prosecution case when the church relied on counsel in initiating a copyright infringement suit. In a malicious prosecution of copyright infringement claims brought by the operator of a YouTube channel that featured videos containing…
Back in 2016, the CJEU examined the question of whether backup copies of software could be resold, following the exhaustion of the right of distribution pursuant to the judgment in C-128/11 UsedSoft. In C-166/15 Ranks (Microsoft), the Court ruled that, although the initial acquirer of software can resell that copy and his licence, he cannot…
With decision n. 482 of 2019 the Italian Court of Torino decided on whether the beauty and the history of a car may be reasons to deserve copyright protection. The case regards the company Tecnomodel S.r.l. producer of miniature cars, including the models in scale 1/18 and 1/43 of the cars Alfa Romeo Giulietta SZ and…
