Not yet tired of linking and copyright? More on the CJEU decision in VG-Bild Kunst
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...