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Showing posts from February, 2019

Facebook found liable for hosting links to unlicensed content

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Kilari and Valentina Ponzone For the first time under Italian law a platform (Facebook) has been found liable for hosting third- party links to unlicensed content.   The decision was issued by the Rome Court of First Instance a few days ago: it is  Tribunale di Roma, sentenza 3512/2019 . The judgment is both interesting and important, also considering the  YouTube  referral (C-682/18)   currently pending before the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU)  [Katpost  here ] .  Let's see more in detail what happened and how the Rome court reasoned. Background Broadcaster Reti Televisive Italiane SpA (RTI) and singer Valentina Ponzone sued Facebook over the creation, on the latter, of a profile that hosted unlicensed videos and defamatory comments relating to Ms Ponzone's performance of the  intro to the Italian version of Japanese animated TV series  Kilari . The profile also contained a photograph of Ms Ponzone dressed up a

'CHIARA FERRAGNI' not confusingly similar to 'CHIARA', rules EU General Court

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Those who follow all things influencers will be pleased to learn that yesterday the General Court (GC) issued a ruling ( T-647/17 ,  only available in Italian and French) in which it found that the application to register the figurative sign ‘CHIARA FERRAGNI’ as an EUTM could proceed. What happened In 2015 Serendipity Srl, a company of which fashion blogger, IT girl and influencer  Chiara Ferragni  is a member, filed an application to register this sign as an EUTM in classes 18 and 25: The application was opposed in accordance with Article 8(1)(b)  EUTMR  by a Dutch company that holds earlier word Benelux trade mark 'CHIARA' registered in class 25. The EUIPO Opposition Division  decided  in favour of the opponent in respect of certain goods in class 18 and for all goods claimed in class 25, on grounds that likelihood of confusion would subsist between the 'CHIARA' and 'CHIARA FERRAGNI' signs. The applicants appealed the decision

The value gap proposal in the latest Franco-German deal: what are the key points?

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As readers who have been following the discourse around the  draft Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market   [Katposts  here ]  will know, a few days ago the closed-door trilogue negotiations encountered a major obstacle, due to disagreement over one of the most debated provisions in this proposed piece of legislation: Article 13, also known as the 'value gap' or 'transfer of value' proposal  [Katposts  here ] .  While France has supported the idea that the obligations within Article 13 should be generally applicable, Germany has advanced the view that an exemption should be instead available to undertakings with annual turnovers below a certain threshold (EUR 20 million). Concept of 'value gap' Article 13 is a provision which, in the original intention of the EU Commission, would serve to remedy what has come to be known in jargon as the ‘value gap’ or ‘transfer of value’.  This concept refers to a claimed mismat

Writing a proposal for an LLM/PhD thesis: what do you need to think about?

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UniKat: Working hard ... not to fall asleep Several students are currently busy choosing or will shortly choose topics to develop in the context of their own university theses and dissertations, including at the LLM/master level and in the context of PhD proposals/early stages of their PhDs. Often, students have to submit a ‘Proposal’, which tackles how they intend to develop their work . The allowed word count for a thesis/dissertation varies: it is approximately somewhere between 15,000 and 25,000 words for an LLM dissertation and 75,000-100,000 words for a PhD.  The funny thing about LLM/PhD proposals is that one is expected to know what they are going to write about  before  they have done all the required research and actually know what needs to be written about. Several books and articles have been written on how to develop a good piece of academic research, whether as a student or as a professional researcher.  However, not much is avail