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The IPKat has an email address,  but not a postal one (Image by Riana Harvey) Does the notion of ‘address’ only refer to one’s own postal address or does it also encompass one’s own email and IP address, as well as telephone number? This, in a nutshell, is the question which the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) had been required to answer in  Constantin Film v YouTube , C-264/19 . The referral, which Germany’s Federal Court of Justice had made, focused on the interpretation of  Article 8(2)(a) of the Enforcement Directive , a piece of EU legislation adopted in 2004. The background national proceedings had originated from the refusal, by YouTube and its parent company Google, to provide film producer Constantin Film with the email and IP addresses, as well as telephone numbers, of YouTube users who had uploaded on that platform unlawful copies of its films  Parker  and  Scary Movie 5 . A few months ago - as The IP...

A public? Over the past several years, the right of communication to the public in art. 3(1) of the  InfoSoc Directive  has progressively and consistently taken centre stage in the EU copyright system. This has been so also given the great number of referrals (over twenty since the 2006 decision in  SGAE ) to the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU). EU law does not define the concept of ‘communication to the public’. Lacking a definition, the CJEU has sought to determine the meaning and scope thereof in light of the objectives pursued by the InfoSoc Directive, notably that of ensuring a high level of protection of intellectual property (recital 24). Like the other economic rights harmonised in the InfoSoc Directive, the right of communication to the public “should be understood in a broad sense” (recital 23). The two key requirements of art. 3(1) of the InfoSoc Directive are a ‘communication’ directed at a ‘public’. A simple example might be a free...

The ECtHR Earlier this week, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) had the opportunity to assess website blocking from the perspective of freedom of expression under Article 10 of the  European Convention on Human Rights   (ECHR) in its  judgment in  Vladimir Kharitonov v Russia   [see  here  and  here  for the commentaries of two of the third-party interveners in the case] . Background The applicant, Mr Kharitonov, is the owner and administrator of the website Electronic Publishing News (http://www.digital-books.ru), which features a compilation of news, articles and reviews about electronic publishing. The website is hosted by DreamHost, a service which hosts multiple websites, all with the same IP address but different domain names. In late 2012, the applicant became aware that access to his website had been blocked by a number of Russian ISPs as a result of an order of the Russian telecoms regulator (Roskomnadzo...

Lively drafting session ... Is an anticounterfeiting service regulation drafted by an IP lawyer protected by copyright? This, in a nutshell, is the question at the heart of the dispute initially brought by said IP lawyer against the organizers of a trade fair in the Venice area, who had allegedly copied the regulation that he had drafted. Last month, the Italian Supreme Court  ruled   (decision 10300/2020,  Casucci v Unipol Assicurazioni S.p.A. and Others , also commented in Italian  here ) that, in principle, a technical work like that one at hand could be eligible for copyright protection, subject to it being original. Background At first instance, the IP lawyer prevailed over the defendants.  However, in 2016, the Venice Court of Appeal ruled in favour of the defendants/appellants, holding that it was not apparent where the originality – and, thus, protectability - of said regulation would lie, since the regulation at hand was found to...

A Brompton Bicycle bike (top) and its alleged counterfeit (bottom) in the background national proceedings Since its seminal ruling  Infopaq  nearly 11 years ago  [Kat-celebration  here ] , the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) has been contributing fundamentally to both shaping and placing the building blocks of copyright protection in the EU.  Through a string of decisions (the most important being  Infopaq ,  BSA ,  FAPL ,  Painer ,  Football Dataco ,  SAS ,  Levola Hengelo , and  Cofemel ), the Court has answered the most basic and relevant question:  When does copyright protection arise? Today, the CJEU has issued  yet another ruling  contributing to this very debate. It did so in the context of a referral from Belgium -  Brompton Bicycle , C-833/18  - concerning copyright protection of functional shapes (in the background proceedings, it is the shape of Brompto...

Last month, the Milan Court of First Instance issued a decision ( sentenza 2539/2020 , available on darts-ip and already commented  here ) concerning the alleged infringement, by fashion house  Antonio Marras , of copyright (both economic and moral rights) in the photograph below, which the latter had used without the photographer’s authorization in its Fall/Winter 2014-15 fashion collection and campaign: The claimant's work (L) and an item from the Antonio Marras Fall/Winter 2014-15 collection The court sided with the claimant, having established that his photograph – which has been also registered with the US Copyright Office - would qualify for protection under the ‘ordinary’ copyright regime. Under Italian law, in fact, photographs may be protected in two ways: on the one hand, there is the ordinary copyright regime, which is available to photographs that display a ‘creative character’ under Articles 1 and 2 No 7 of the  Italian Copyright Act ; on the ...

A KIKO store A couple of years ago, The IPKat  reported   on the interesting decision of the Court of Appeal of  inter alia , copyright protection of  makeup producer and retailer KIKO 's store layout under Italian law. Milan in a case concerning, The ruling, which upheld the decision at first instance, confirmed that the layout of KIKO concept stores – notably the way in which the various elements used to furnish such stores are combined, coordinated and assembled – is eligible for protection under  Article 2 No 5 of the Italian Copyright Act  as as an architectural plan. It also found that defendant  WYCON ’s stores had infringed copyright in it. Now, the Italian Supreme Court has confirmed the appropriateness of this conclusion  [this court is not a court on the merits, and may only be seized on issues concerning the correct interpretation of the law]  in a decision published earlier this week ( decision 780/2020 ). Of t...