The court granted a blocking injunction requiring a number of internet service providers to block their customers’ access to streaming servers where copyright infringements were taking place through the unauthorised streaming of live footage of sports events. Case date: 20 September 2018 Case number: [2018] EWHC 2443 (Ch) Court: High Court of Justice of England and…
Using newer forms of Artificial Intelligence (AI), including General Adversarial Networks (GANs), AI machines are increasingly good at emulating humans and laying siege to what has been a strictly human outpost: intellectual creativity. AI machines have composed polyphonic baroque music bearing the “style” of J.S. Bach. “Robot reporters” routinely write news bulletins and sports reports,…
EU copyright reform is upon is. Once again, the Member States will need to develop their own implementations of a new piece of European copyright law. This time, the task is far from easy. Due to political turbulence in the legislative process, the resulting text of the Directive is extremely complex. Because of this, there…
A software development company was held to own the copyright in source code authored by its sole programmer on the basis that the relationship between the parties was one of employer and employee. Case date: 30 July 2018 Case number: [2018] EWHC 1924 (Ch) Court: High Court of Justice of England and Wales, Chancery Division A…
On 2 May 2019, Advocate General Szpunar delivered his opinion in Case C-683/17, Cofemel – Sociedade de Vestuário SA v. G-Star Raw CV (not yet available in English). The case concerned designs for t-shirts and jeans made by G-Star Raw. In essence, the question posed by the Portuguese Supreme Court is whether Member States have…
In Happy Camper Productions Ltd v British Broadcasting Corporation, the claimant sought an interim injunction in the context of alleged infringement of copyright in a script. The claimant failed in its application for multiple reasons as we explore. The claimant company was the purported owner of the copyright in a script for a pilot episode…
Part 1 of this post discussed the legislative history and significance of the CJEU referral in Tom Kabinet. This part will illustrate content and implications of the three classificatory dichotomies, explain why EU copyright law needs digital exhaustion, and propose interpretative solutions for the CJEU to help with this, leveraging the occasion offered by the…
The Court concluded that the Copyright Tribunal does not have jurisdiction under section 126 of the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 to set the terms of licences of foreign copyrights; but that it nevertheless has the power in some circumstances to make an order in respect of the whole of a licence which covers…
The Court held that a greeting card designer was the sole copyright owner of the rights in a number of greeting cards but had validly assigned the copyright to the claimant. The defendants were jointly liable for infringement of copyright in two of the claimant’s cards. Case date: 06 June 2018 Case number: [2018] EWHC…
After years of contradictory decisions and obiter dicta, on April 2, 2019 the CJEU held the first hearing in Tom Kabinet (C-263/18), a Dutch referral that promises to solve once and for good the question of admissibility of digital exhaustion under Art. 4(2) InfoSoc. Against the legislative silence, Tom Kabinet puts the Court at a…
