©-LAW

Yesterday, the Italian Supreme Court issued two key decisions concerning the liability of intermediaries for third-party IPR infringements. The judgments are:   Decision 7708/19  Reti Televisive Italiane SpA v Yahoo! Inc   and   Decision 7709/19  Reti Televisive Italiane SpA v Yahoo! Inc . The former relates to Yahoo!’s videosharing service, while the latter concerns Yahoo!’s search engine.  The Yahoo!'s videosharing service decision is particularly important in that it: clarifies at what conditions a hosting provider would be eligible (and ineligible) for the safe harbour under Italian law (where the divide passive/active host has been subject to extensive discussions in case law and scholarly literature alike); holds that a notice-and-takedown request does not necessarily have to indicate the URLs at which infringing content is to be found (this being yet another contentious issue under Italian law); and finds that a notice-and-taked...

Topazio, one of the soap operas produced by Delta TV Is YouTube an active host and, if so, ineligible for the safe harbour protection within Article 14 of the  E-commerce Directive ? As readers with an interest in intermediary liability know, this is not a novel question: indeed, it has been already raised a number of times before national courts. A few weeks ago, in a  decision available on Marchi & Brevetti  (sentenza 7 April 2017 No 1928, RG 38113/2013,  Delta TV v Google and YouTube  – judge rapporteur: Guglielmo Rende), the Tribunale di Torino (Turin Court of First Instance) revisited this issue, and provided an interesting response. Readers might recall that this decision follows other interim rulings commented on this blog  here  and  here . Background Back in 2013 Delta TV, which produces and owns the copyright to a number of South-American soap operas (including audiovisual works for the Italian, Monaco, Swis...