Case Law, CJEU, Digital Single Market, Enforcement, European Union, Infringement, Liability, Remedies, Sweden

(Institute for Information Law (IViR))/ /2 Comments

Website blocking injunction cases are complicated in Sweden because the Copyright Act requires contributory liability of the ISP, or in the case of interim injunctions – probable cause, for an injunction to be issued. While the reduced evidentiary burden for interim injunctions does not completely absolve a court from scrutinising the evidence, the legal context…

Digital Single Market, European Union, Legislative process

(Boehmert & Boehmert) and (NORDEMANN)/ /Leave a comment

Since 1 April 2018, the Portability Regulation has prohibited geo-blocking of online content within the European Union under certain requirements. The regulation guarantees the unrestricted access to (paid) subscribed online content of all European citizens, regardless of where they are present in EU territory. The presence must be “temporary”. Providers of fee-based online content are…

Case Law, Enforcement, European Union, Infringement, Liability, Remedies, Sweden

(Institute for Information Law (IViR))/ /2 Comments

Josef K. was minding his own business when one morning, even though he knew he had done nothing wrong, he was arrested. This was the beginning of his trial. In his masterpiece entitled The Trial, Franz Kafka tells, among many things, the story of a man trying to interact with a preposterous system of justice….

Digital Single Market, European Union, Germany, Legislative process, Making available (right of), Press Publishers ’ Right, Reproduction (right of), Spain

(Berkeley Law School)/ /2 Comments

This article will be forthcoming in the March 2019 issue of Communications of the ACM, a computing professionals journal. The editors of Communications of the ACM have given permission for it to be pre-published for the Kluwer Copyright Blog.         Should European press publishers be granted a new intellectual property (IP) right…

Brexit, European Union, United Kingdom

(Bristows)/ /1 Comment

Whilst it is highly debatable whether the EU Withdrawal Agreement will get through the UK Parliament, the chances are that if any revised deal is struck later, the IP provisions will remain unchanged.  (The Johnson brothers, and even Jacob Rees-Mogg are unlikely to be terribly exercised about matters such as the continued application post- 31…

Case Law, USA

(Wolters Kluwer Legal & Regulatory US)/ /Leave a comment

The Copyright Act’s registration requirement was a non-jurisdictional element of a copyright infringement claim; therefore, a lawsuit brought by online legal research provider Fastcase, Inc., against a competitor to resolve a dispute over the publication of regulations for the State of Georgia should not have been dismissed on the ground that the district court lacked…

Authorship, European Union, Originality, Ownership

(Maastricht University)/ /2 Comments

The creation of works by artificial intelligence systems (AIS) challenges our perception of creativity and, with it, of eligibility for copyright protection. Examples abound. AIS can autonomously create paintings, literary works, music, or even artificial photos. Were these works created by a human being, their eligibility for copyright protection would not be controversial. However, it…

AG Opinion, Case Law, CJEU, European Union, Exceptions and Limitations, Germany, Originality, Subject matter (copyrightable)

(University College Dublin)/ /Leave a comment

The relation between freedom of expression and copyright in the EU is one of imprecision and uncertainty. In Funke Medien (Case C-469/17) the German Federal Supreme Court (BGH) asks whether fundamental rights should permit the unauthorized use of military reports in the absence of an applicable copyright exception. In his Opinion, Advocate General (AG) Szpunar…

Case Law, USA

(Wolters Kluwer Legal & Regulatory US)/ /Leave a comment

On remand in a dispute between three academic publishers and Georgia State University about the university’s practice of distributing to students digital excerpts of copyrighted works without paying the publishers, a federal district court misinterpreted the mandate of the U.S. Court of Appeals in Atlanta and misapplied the defense of fair use when it granted…