©-LAW

  A few days ago the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) rendered its   judgment in C-433/20  Austro-Mechana , ruling that the notion of reproduction ‘on any medium’ extends to the cloud and, therefore, that private copying under Article 5(2)(b) of the   InfoSoc Directive   also applies in that context. Kat cloud ... The judgment is in line with last year’s  Opinion  of Advocate General (AG) Hogan  [ here ]  and clarifies the treatment of private copying in the context of cloud computing, this being something that had been previously asked to the Court (in the context of the  VCAST  referral:  here ), but which the CJEU did not expressly address, preferring instead to focus on the qualification of providers of cloud-based storage facilities that give access to protected content to users based in territories for which no licence is in place. Background This referral from Austria was made in the context of litigation be...

  Earlier this year, The IPKat   reported   on the judgment of the Grand Chamber of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) in   VG Bild-Kunst , C-392/19 , an important case concerning contractual restrictions to linking under EU copyright law (on that occasion, I also updated my linking table: see   here ). The CJEU explicitly ruled – for the first time – that linking to a copyright work lawfully published on a third-party website may be restricted through contract and not solely through technical restrictions on access (for instance, a paywall). To this end, however, the concerned rightholder is required to adopt or mandate the adoption of effective technological measures. Lacking these, an unauthorised act of linking shall not be infringing. The judgment has important implications for the construction of the right of communication to the public in the  InfoSoc Directive  and its application to online scenarios, as well as for the interpret...

  Do platforms like YouTube and cyberlocker Uploaded directly perform copyright-restricted acts under Article 3 of the   InfoSoc Directive ? At what conditions is the hosting safe harbour under Article 14(1) of the   Ecommerce Directive   available? What may be the requirements for injunctions under Article 8(3) of the InfoSoc Directive? These are some of the questions that the German Federal Court of Justice had referred to the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) in two separate cases, which were subsequently joined:  YouTube , C-682/18 and  Cyando , C-683/18. The  Opinion  of the Advocate General (AG) Øe was issued a little less than a year ago  [Katpost  here ] . This morning, the Grand Chamber of the CJEU delivered  its much-awaited ruling . Here are a couple of immediate impressions: First, unlike the AG, the CJEU was cautious not to venture into any analysis of the regime under Article 17 of the  DSM Directive ...

When the room you booked on Airbnb is already occupied Earlier this week, The IPKat received an intriguing couple of questions from a reader who is currently studying IP law: does someone renting out their spare bedroom on  Airbnb  around 50% of the time have to acquire a separate licence for the TV set which they have in said room? and what if they also have a radio set that allows guests to play music in said environment?  From an EU perspective, issues of this kind require consideration of the string of case law of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) on the right of communication to the public under the  InfoSoc  and  Rental and Lending Rights  Directives, including a pending referral -  Stim and SAMI , C-753/18   [Katpost  here ]   ( the Opinion of the appointed Advocate General is  expected  on 15 January 2020) - asking whether: the hiring out of cars equipped as standard with radio receiver...

The IPKat's favourite type of link The IPKat is back with the 6th instalment of the DSM Directive ( Directive 2019/790 ) series  [previous episodes  here ,  here ,  here ,  here , and  here ] . Today's topic is once again Article 15 and the new press publishers' right.  Among other things, the protection granted under Article 15(1), that is the right of EU-based press publishers to control the reproduction and making available for online use of their press publications by information society service provider s, " shall not apply to acts of hyperlinking " (Article 15(1), subparagraph 3). Recital 57 substantially states the same thing, by providing that " [t]he rights granted to publishers of press publications should not extend to acts of hyperlinking ." Hyperlinks and the press publishers' right: from the original proposal to the final version The final version of the directive is not dissimilar from  the o...

Volker Beck  (photo by Mathias Schindler CC-BY-SA) After the late 2018 Opinions in  Funke Medien  [ here ]  and  Pelham   [ here ] , yesterday Advocate General Maciej (AG) Szpunar -  IPKat's copyright person of the year 2018  - issued his  Opinion  in  Spiegel Online , C-516/17   [background  here ] , the third German referral asking the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) to weigh in on, among other things, the interplay between copyright and other fundamental rights. The Opinion, which is not yet available in English, advises the CJEU to rule that, among other things: The exception within Article 5(3)(d) of the  InfoSoc Directive  requires one to consider the purpose of the quotation at issue, and  Fundamental rights like freedom of expression do not allow EU Member States to go beyond the catalogue of exceptions in Article 5 therein to envisage new exceptions or even ...