©-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...

Can the provider of a password-free free Wi-Fi be liable for infringements - specifically:  of copyright - of those who use his/her service? This question is not an abstract one, but rather the core of a case currently pending before the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU):  McFadden  C-484/14 . As readers may imagine, should the answer be 'yes', this would change quite a few things ... Background This blog  reported  for the first time on this reference for a preliminary ruling in late 2014, and also  hosted  the open 'Save our open WiFi' letter penned by the  Electronic Frontier Foundation  in 2015.  As explained above, in a nutshell this case requires the CJEU to clarify  [once again ... a recent instance is the decision in  Papasavvas , an online defamation case]  who can be considered an intermediary for the sake of the  ECommerce Directive  and what remedies can be sought aga...