©-LAW

Is there gift more memorable than a blocking injunction? What has been the most significant IP development in the UK this year?  From a policy standpoint (and in the aftermath of the Brexit referendum) the answer is probably the decision of UK Government to ratify the Unified Patent Court Agreement  [ here ] .  From a practical perspective, however, also considering the increasing number of IP infringements occurring online  [this is a general trend: see  here , at p 33]  the most significant domestic development in my opinion has been the  judgment  of the Court of Appeal of England and Wales in  Cartier   [ here ,  here ,  here ] , which upheld the 2014  decision  of Arnold J  [ here  and  here ] , and confirmed that  owners of IP rights other than copyright can seek injunctions against intermediaries to block access to website where counterfeits are available. The UK frame...

Wow, what a rolling coaster of emotions the past few days have been for EU- based  copyright enthusiasts!  After last week's  GS Media  decision   [ here ,  here ,  here ]  in Luxembourg and yesterday's  copyright package  in Brussels, today is back again to Luxembourg for the judgment of the Court of Justice of the European Union in  Mc Fadden , C-484/14   [the decision is not yet available on the Curia website, but here's the  press release ]  [UPDATE at 11:12: the judgment is  now available  on the Curia website] This blog has followed this case for a while, after  reporting  for the first time on this reference for a preliminary ruling from  th e Landgericht München I (Regional Court, Munich I, Germany)  in late 2014 (and also  hosting  the open 'Save our open WiFi' letter penned by the  Electronic Frontier Foundation  in 2015). What is this case abou...

Mr Justice Gerard Hogan, who delivered the Court of Appeal judgment What (if any) steps may a court require internet service providers (ISPs) to take to assist  copyright holders to identify customers who use the network provided by these providers to access the internet for the purpose of illegally downloading or uploading copyright material? What kind of jurisdiction does Article 8(3) of the InfoSoc Directive, as implemented into the laws of Member States, confer upon national courts?   These are the very questions that the the Irish Court of Appeal (Hogan J) addressed in an interesting  judgment  issued at the end of July, further to the appeal brought by UPC against the 2015  judgment  of Cregan J in the High Court.  There, Cregan J had ordered this ISP to implement a form of  graduated response system  (GRS) within its network for the benefit of - amongst others - Sony Music.  Apparently, the type of GRS orde...

... possibly true Can search engines be ordered to filter  all  results containing certain keywords or a  combination of certain keywords? In a nutshell, this was the issue that the Tribunal de Grande Instance de Paris (TGI) addressed in the context of litigation between  SNEP   [the French Syndicate of Phonographic Publishing ]   and Microsoft. In its  decision  on 8 July 2016  [this post has been written relying on the original French version of the judgment]  the TGI answered the question above in the negative. Background Claiming that through Microsoft’s search engine Bing users could access infringing copies of phonograms or video recordings, SNEP sought an injunction against Microsoft to implement filters on Bing (under all top level domains) to prevent – for a period of 12 months – the display of results containing in their domain name the word ‘torrent’ and provided when conducting the following queries:  ...