©-LAW

Is unauthorised linking to unlicensed content an act of communication to the public within Article 3(1) of the   InfoSoc Directive   and, if so, a potential copyright infringement? Readers will promptly recall that last month the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) addressed this very question in  GS Media , C-160/15  [discussed  here ,  here ,  here ,  here ] ,   and concluded that - to answer - one must not only consider the classic duo (1) act of communication + (2) to a public, but also " several complementary criteria, which are not autonomous and are interdependent"   [para 34] .   These, according to the CJEU, include whether the posting of hyperlinks is carried out for profit and whether the person who posts the link has knowledge of the unauthorised character of the content linked to. All in all, the situation can be summarised (simplifying) as follows: After  GS Media , the question ha...

AG Szpunar Under the  Rental and Lending Rights Directive , among other things, broadcasting  organisations have  the exclusive right to authorise or prohibit the communication to the public of their broadcasts in places accessible to the public against payment of an entrance fee.  More specifically, Article 8(3) of that directive provides that: "Member States shall provide for broadcasting organisations the exclusive right to authorise or prohibit the rebroadcasting of their broadcasts by wireless means, as well as the communication to the public of their broadcasts if such communication is made in places accessible to the public against payment of an entrance fee." Are hotel rooms included in the notion of "places accessible to the public against payment of an entrance fee"? This is the issue on which the  Handelsgericht Wien (Commercial Court, Vienna) is seeking guidance from the Court of Justice of the European Union...

Image Search for IPKat As reported by this blog  [ here ,  here  and  here ] , earlier this year France adopted  a law  [ Loi No 2016-925  on  freedom of creation, architecture and cultural heritage]  which - among other things - introduced new provisions  [ Articles L 136-1 to 136-4 ]  into the  Code de la propriété intellectuelle  (CPI) to regulate the  exercise of the exclusive rights of reproduction and representation vis-à-vis automated image referencing services.  The content of the new provisions As explained by Brad Spitz in a  post  published on the Kluwer Copyright Blog, "the new provisions will apply to ‘automated image search services’, which  Article L.136-1 IPC   defines as any online public communication service that reproduces and makes available to the public for purposes of indexing and SEO, plastic, graphic or photographic works, collected in an autom...

Is the practice of publishing extracts of entertainment  TV programmes risky? In Italy, yes (in the picture, an example from UK's  Daily Mail ) Do the Italian copyright exceptions for news reporting and  criticism/review  [respectively,  Articles  65  and  70  of the Italian Copyright Act]  apply to the reproduction and making available on a newspaper's website of extracts of TV programmes having the character of pure entertainment  [eg  Big Brother ] ? As  reported  by very interesting online resource Marchi & Brevetti, according the Tribunale di Roma (Rome Court of First Instance) the answer is ... NO. In a decision adopted on 13 July 2016 but only published on 5 October 2016 (18413/2016), the Rome court ruled partly in favour of  RTI - Reti Televisive Italiane (owned by broadcasting company  Mediaset ). It did so in the context of proceedings that RTI had brought against Gruppo Editorial...