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A day in the life of a Kat: from Playboy bunny to ... In late 2017 The IPKat  reported  that, after Europe, it appeared that the interplay between linking and copyright protection had re-surfaced also in the US  [use of the term 're-surfaced' is justified in light of the fact that US courts have already had the chance to address these issues, eg in the well-known  Perfect 10  case ] . After a few months, earlier this week two decisions have been issued on this matter ... with two rather different outcomes. Linking to unlicensed content Round #1: KO -  Playboy v Boing Boing First, on 14 February  US District Judge Fernando Olguin (US District Court for the Central District of California)  dismissed  (but with leave to amend) Playboy's complaint against Boing Boing. What is (was?) at stake here? Basically Playboy  [European readers will promptly recall that indeed the landmark decision of the Court of Justice of the European Unio...

As this blog  reported  a couple of days ago, following his first  Opinion  in June 2017, last Tuesday Advocate General (AG) Szpunar issued his new  Opinion  in  Louboutin , C-163/16. Since then, the content and value of the Opinion have not been arguably correctly picked by some media, with some  even  summarizing it as follows: “ Can Christian Louboutin Trademark Red Soles? An E.U. Court Says No ”  [there are  so  many reasons why this headline is just wrong …] . All this has led Christian Louboutin to issue a press release, suggesting that some of the reports of the Opinion could be considered … ‘fake news’  [ here ,  here ,  here ] : “ While ordinarily Christian Louboutin does not comment directly on pending matters, we are making an exception in this instance to correct what appears to be misleading reports of the opinion of M. Szpunar, advocate general, which is seen to impact our ...

The first ad Is the prohibition to use in advertising the image of Jesus and Mary on grounds of public morals an undue compression of one’s own freedom of expression? This is essentially the issue that the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) had to address in  Sekmadienis v Lithuania  (Appl No 69317/14) . In yesterday’s judgment the Court answered … in the affirmative. The decision is interesting because the ECtHR reviewed the application of freedom of expression within Article 10 of the  European Convention on Human Rights  (ECHR) in the context of commercial advertising and in light of the vague concept of ‘public morals’. Background The applicant, Sekmadienis, is a Lithuanian clothing company that in 2012 ran an advertising campaign featuring three advertisements: 1.      The first showed a young man with long hair, a headband, a halo around his head and several tattoos wearing a pair of jeans. A caption at the ...