©-LAW

The TV format at the centre of the case decided by the Supreme Court TV formats may be incredibly valuable, and be sold in franchise in several countries. As a result, also disputes relating to TV formats may be complex, lengthy and with uncertain outcomes, as the current litigation relating to  The Voice , for example, demonstrates  [ here  and  here ] . In addition to the complexities of individual cases, a further difficulty is defining what kind of legal treatment TV formats are subject to in the first place. Discussion of the type of protection available has been, in fact, rather contentious in a number of countries.  On the one hand, there are jurisdictions (like the UK), in which subject-matter like TV formats may not to be really suitable for inclusion in the scope of protection of an IP right like copyright (also for difficulties related to the  closed  subject-matter categorisation envisaged by the Copyright, Designs and Pa...

Is Google responsible for the lawfulness of the images displayed through its  Images search service ? According to the German Federal Court of Justice ( Bundesgerichtshof - BGH), the answer is NO. In a judgment delivered yesterday ( I ZR 11/16 - Preview III ) the BGH relied on the decision of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) in  GS Media , C-160/15   [Katposts  here ]  and dismissed the action that the operator of a photography website had brought against Google and its search engine. Background The applicant’s website includes a restricted (password-protected) area to which customers can only access upon payment of a fee. Once there, customers are able to download the photographs placed in this area to their computers. Some of these photographs were re-uploaded unlawfully by customers onto freely accessible websites. Relevant thumbnails were subsequently indexed on Google Images from such freely accessible sites. Acc...

The Dolce&Gabbana 'MARADONA' jersey A few days ago a number of newspapers (mostly in Italian and Spanish) reported that former Argentinean footballer  Diego Armando Maradona  has sued Italian fashion house  Dolce&Gabbana . The reason? According to  Corriere della Sera ,  the  Pibe de Oro  (as Maradona was nicknamed) claims that fashion designers Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana have unduly exploited his name for commercial reasons.  During a fashion show held in the city centre of Naples  [Maradona  played for Napoli  for a few years, and in that city he reached the peak of his career]  in 2016, a model wore a jersey bearing the number 10  [ie the number that Maradona used to have]  and the word 'MARADONA'. The jersey itself also had the same colour combination of Napoli's jerseys, ie light blue and white. The complaint filed before the Milan Court of First Instance is not publicly available, so it ...

Does EU law prohibit  a commercial undertaking from providing - without the authorisation of the relevant copyright owner - private individuals with  cloud computing  services for the remote video recording of private copies of works protected by copyright, by means of that commercial undertaking’s active involvement in the recording? This - in essence - is the issue at stake in  V CAST Limited v  R.T.I. SpA , C-265/16 , a reference for a preliminary ruling to the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) from the Turin Court of First Instance. This morning Advocate General (AG) Szpunar answered the question in the affirmative in his  Opinion   [not yet available in English] . Background This reference was made in the context of proceedings concerning the unauthorised making available by  VCAST  (a UK company that calls itself a "video cloud recorder") of a cloud-based recording service that allows the recording of free-t...