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Kat blocking Earlier this week, the High Court of England and Wales issued two website blocking orders, which set new precedent and are the expression of a further development in the rich UK website blocking jurisprudence.  The orders, which were issued by Miles J further to applications made by record labels that are members of  BPI , are the first orders ever granted in the UK to block access to, respectively, a cyberlocker and a number of streamripping sites/app. The decisions are also interesting from a broader, EU perspective, in that the judge considered that the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) is unlikely to follow the position adopted by Advocate General (AG) Saugmandsgaard Øe in his 2020  Opinion , when it decides  YouTube/Cyando , C-682/18 and C-683/18  [Katpost  here ]. Capitol Records and Others v BT and Others : cyberlocker operators The  first order  was made further to an application by record companies, which are memb...

Merpel's favourite platforms Nearly two years have passed since the adoption of the  Directive on copyright in the Digital Single Market 2019/790 (DSM Directive) . As it was probably bound to happen, the discussion of its content – notably of its Article 17 – is no less heated now than in 2016-2019, that is the period between the release of the  Commission’s original Proposal  and the adoption of this piece of EU copyright legislation. Member States have until 7 June 2021 to transpose the Directive into their own laws, though delays are likely to occur due to a number of reasons. Besides the disruption caused by the ongoing COVID pandemic, the publication of the Commissions’ Guidance on the application of Article 17 (see Article 17(10)) has been also postponed to a later time than originally expected. In the meantime, different positions have emerged regarding the interpretation and application of this important and complex provision, with contributions made by interest g...

Blocking application Website blocking orders in IP cases (mostly, though not solely, in relation to copyright-infringing websites) are routinely granted in several jurisdictions, whether in Europe or third countries. The availability of such relief has been established in case law, administrative frameworks and academic studies alike. The Court of Justice of the European Union ('CJEU') expressly acknowledged the compatibility of such a remedy with EU law in its 2014 decision in  UPC Telekabel . Also the European Court of Human Rights  recently found  that, although it is necessary that this particular remedy is available within a balanced and carefully drafted legislative framework which contains a robust and articulated set of safeguards against abuse, website blocking orders are not  per se  contrary to the provision in  Article 10 ECHR . Over time, courts and other authorities (including administrative authorities in certain EU Member States) have dealt ...

  Can a sign representing an artwork be registered as a trade mark? Can trade mark registration be used to monopolize artworks? If so, can any such intention and behaviour be repressed? The answer to all these questions is in the affirmative, as  Pest Control  – a handling service acting on behalf of elusive artist  Banksy  – learned yesterday, when the Cancellation Division of the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO)  ordered  that its EU trade mark (EUTM) registration representing one of Banksy’s best known artworks, the  Flower Thrower , be declared invalid on the ground of bad faith. Background In 2014, Pest Control obtained the  registration  of the figurative mark represented below as an EUTM in relation to goods and services in classes 2, 9, 16, 18, 19, 24, 25, 27, 28, 41, and 42. In 2019, Full Colour applied to obtain a declaration of invalidity for all relevant goods/services on grounds of bad faith under Article ...

IPKat posts as evidence in court? Why not! Image credits: Riana Harvey Does the disclosure in court proceedings of a work protected by copyright or related rights amount to InfoSoc Directive ? Is the notion of ‘public’ in the right of communication/making available to the public in Article 3 therein to be intended in the same way as the notion of ‘public’ in the right of distribution in Article 4? How can copyright protection be reconciled with transparency obligations? a ‘communication to the public’ and/or a ‘distribution to the public’ within the meaning of the  These, in a nutshell, are the issues that the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) will have to address when it decides  BY , C-637/19 , a referral made by the Svea Court of Appeal, Patent and Market Court of Appeal, Stockholm, Sweden. This morning, Advocate General (AG) Hogan issued his  Opinion , in which he advised the Court to rule that the electronic transmission by a litigant or a ...