©-LAW

Yesterday the stunning London offices of Simmons & Simmons hosted a  panel discussion  on  the implications of the recent   Court of Appeal judgment   in  Cartier  [ here ] .  The debate also included the question of who should bear the costs of a blocking injunction: should it be intermediaries or rightholders? The  Cartier  decision and the dissent on costs In its ruling the Court of Appeal upheld the  decision  of Arnold J at first instance  [noted  here  and  here ]  and confirmed that blocking injunctions can be also sought in online trade mark cases, even lacking an express implementation into UK law of the third sentence of Article 11 of the  Enforcement Directive  (" Member States shall also ensure that rightholders are in a position to apply for an injunction against intermediaries whose services are used by a third party to infringe an intellectual property rig...

... possibly true Can search engines be ordered to filter  all  results containing certain keywords or a  combination of certain keywords? In a nutshell, this was the issue that the Tribunal de Grande Instance de Paris (TGI) addressed in the context of litigation between  SNEP   [the French Syndicate of Phonographic Publishing ]   and Microsoft. In its  decision  on 8 July 2016  [this post has been written relying on the original French version of the judgment]  the TGI answered the question above in the negative. Background Claiming that through Microsoft’s search engine Bing users could access infringing copies of phonograms or video recordings, SNEP sought an injunction against Microsoft to implement filters on Bing (under all top level domains) to prevent – for a period of 12 months – the display of results containing in their domain name the word ‘torrent’ and provided when conducting the following queries:  ...

Puzzling level of aggressiveness in guy's expression The Tribunale di Roma (Rome Court of First Instance) is back with yet another decision on  the liability of online intermediaries (ISPs) for third-party copyright infringements. After the decisions against video sharing platforms Break  [noted  here ]  and Kewego  [noted  here ] , this time it was the turn of streaming platform Megavideo  [shut down in Italy since 2012]  to be found ineligible for safe harbour protection pursuant to Article 16 of Decreto Legislativo 70/2003  [by which Italy implemented Article 14 of the  Ecommerce Directive  into its own national law] .  The case is: Tribunale di Roma,  Reti Televisive Italiane spa v Megavideo Ltd , decision  14279/2016, published 15/07/2016. Background In a  decision  published last Friday and made available and commented on very useful Italian IP resource  Marchi&Brevetti , the Rome Cou...

AG Melchior Wathelet Amidst all the   madness  hectic legislative activity surrounding orphan works and out-of- print books that took place in Europe in the first half of 2010s (also as a reflection and echo of the unfolding   Google Books saga   in the US), in 2012 France adopted a   loi   ( Law No 2012-287 of 1 March 2012 ) to allow and regulate the digital exploitation of out-of-print 20th century books. This piece of legislation amended the French  C ode de la propriété intellectuelle  by adding a new chapter ( Chapter IV  - Articles L 134-1 to L 134-9, subsequently amended) to Title III of Book I therein.  Among other things, this French law gives approved collecting societies the right to authorise the reproduction and the representation in digital form of out-of-print books, while allowing the authors of those books, or their successors in title, to oppose or put an end to that practice subject to cer...

Can operators of physical marketplaces be considered "intermediaries whose services are  used by a third party to infringe an intellectual property right", so that "rightholders are in a position to apply for an injunction" against them, pursuant to the third sentence in Article 11 of the   Enforcement Directive ? Put it otherwise: how does the landmark   decision   of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) in   L'Oréal v eBay   [noted   here ,   here , and   here ]   apply in an offline context? This - in a nutshell - were the issues on which the  Nejvyšší soud České rep (Czech Supreme Court) had sought guidance from the CJEU in its   reference for a preliminary ruling   in  Tommy Hilfiger Licensing and Others , C-494/15. This morning the CJEU delivered its judgment   [without a prior Opinion of the Advocate General in this case (Melchior Wathelet)] , holding that t he operator of a physi...

A nice surprise for Cartier and friends Can injunctions (particularly: blocking injunctions) be issued against intermediaries in  trade mark cases, even lacking in the UK a specific implementation of the third sentence in Article 11 of the  Enforcement Directive ? The High Court judgment Back in 2014 the High Court of Justice of England and Wales (Arnold J) answered this question in the affirmative in its judgment in  Cartier and Others v BSkyB and Others   [noted  here  and  here ] . Unlike copyright  [in relation to which the possibility of injunctions against intermediaries is expressly envisaged by  s97A  of the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 (CDPA), through which the UK implemented Article 8(3) of the  InfoSoc Directive  into its own national law] , at the time of transposing the Enforcement Directive into its own law UK Government thought that it did not need to take any action to trans...