On 26 September 2024, the Belgian Constitutional Court referred a highly topical issue of fair remuneration of authors and performers on online streaming platforms to the Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU). The reference, which is poised to result in one of the most significant CJEU judgments in the copyright law field, concerns the…
The Advocate-General’s opinion in the Kwantum v. Vitra referral is remarkable in several ways. The case concerns the protection under Dutch copyright of the iconic “DSW” chair designed by American designers Charles and Ray Eames. Kwantum, a popular low-budget furniture store chain, sold copies of the chair without rightholder Vitra’s permission. Before the Dutch courts…
Free spaces in copyright law are fundamental. They allow us to use and enjoy copyright works, ultimately supporting the creation of future works. Yet, since the Information Society Directive, European copyright law has preferred to protect and incentivise online business models over creativity. This post reflects on the role of exploiters, namely copyright holders with…
As succinctly noted by Susan Bischoff in a prior post, the ongoing legal saga surrounding the ‘Metall auf Metall’ case continues to yield legal insights. Presently, a new reference from the German Federal Court of Justice (BGH) asks the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) for vital interpretive guidance concerning the parody exception…
Repair and maintenance information is often crucial for the repair of today’s increasingly complex and computerised products and devices. Copyright’s subsistence in repair manuals and information can run contrary to the public interest in access and dissemination of this information, leading to the premature product obsolescence and abandonment. The InfoSoc Directive’s non-mandatory exception for the…
Copyright law continues to confront an age-old question: how to best balance copyright interests? This year marks the 20-year anniversary of the Information Society Directive meant to provide a harmonised framework for digital copyright in the EU. This balancing act has proved more complex as technology developed and inherent flaws within the framework became more…
This post is the second installment of a synopsis of the doctoral thesis the author defended at Universidade Católica Portuguesa on 25 September 2020. The thesis was recently published by Kluwer Law International, as part of its Information Law Series. The first part of this post has established the need to reform the InfoSoc framework…
This post is the first instalment of a synopsis of the doctoral thesis the author defended at Universidade Católica Portuguesa (Lisbon) on 25 September 2020. The thesis was recently published by Kluwer Law International, as part of its Information Law Series. Copyright exceptions fine-tune the reach of authors’ exclusive rights. They treat as non-infringing…
By now everyone in the world must have heard of Sweden, especially European copyright lawyers. This post concerns two recent preliminary rulings from the CJEU, both at the request of Swedish courts. As both involved the communication to the public right, and both led the CJEU to pronounce the infrequently heard incantation that Article 3…
In Part 1 of this blog post we addressed certain criticisms from our esteemed colleagues Jan Bernt Nordemann and Julian Waiblinger to our 2019 working paper and the German implementation proposal of Article 17 of the Copyright in the Digital Single Market (CDSM) Directive. In this Part 2, we argue why the latter proposal is…
