Posted in copyright, Court of Justice, EU, originality

European Originality Doctrine – Another Step Further?
Story of European originality concept seems to be evolving with every possible court case. For those who don´t know what I am talking about, a brief summary first. CJEU first in Infopaq C-5/08 expanded Union law concept of originality to the other works that photographs, databases and computer programs, which have their own directives. Later
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Posted in Art. 11 EnforD, Art. 5 TMD, Court of Justice, EU, injunctions, trade mark use, trade marks

Frisdranken Case: Another Bit on ´Intermediary Non-use´ of the Trade Mark
Today, the Court of Justice of the European Union decided very interesting trade mark case – Frisdranken Industrie Winters BV C-119/10, which deals with the question of whether intermediary companies, such as a service provider who, under an order from and on the instructions of another person, fills packaging which was supplied to it by
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Posted in Art. 11 EnforD, Art. 15 EcomD, censorship, Court of Justice, EU, ISP, Liability of ISPs

Thanksgiving gift from Luxembourg – Sabam!
Huťko is very happy to inform you that the Court of Justice of the European Union just rendered its superb decision in Sabam C‑70/10. Not only it is favorable to “internet freedoms”, but to Huťko’s great surprise, it is also based on different, but even better reasoning (the court actually discussed the balance between IP-rights
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Posted in Uncategorized

AG´s Opinion in Bonnier Audio Published
The Curia just published Advocate’s General opinion in Bonnier Audio C-461/10. English version is however not available. Advocate General Jääskinen suggests that (in German) Nach alledem schlage ich dem Gerichtshof vor, auf die Vorlagefragen des Högsta domstol wie folgt zu antworten: Die Richtlinie 2006/24/EG des Europäischen Parlaments und des Rates vom 15. März 2006 über
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Posted in copyright, Court of Justice, EU, InfoSocD, US

Functionality & Expression-Idea Dichotomy Under New European Doctrine of ´Work´
Some of readers might be aware of a pending copyright case Oracle v. Google in the United States. It looks like Oracle is trying to rely on copyright protection of the following subject matter (quoted from Groklaw): .. its “selection, arrangement and structure” of elements in the APIs described by the 37 API specifications ..
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Posted in actual knowledge, Art. 11 EnforD, Art. 14 EcomD, awareness, conflicts of laws, Court of Justice, duty of care, EU, injunctions, ISP, Liability of ISPs, Sec. 8 STMA, secondary liability, trade mark use, trade marks

Hidden Gems of L’Oreal v. eBay
Some of you might be wondering why Huťko did not report on two most interesting CJEU cases of this beautiful summer – L´Oréal v. eBay C-324/09 and Interflora C-323/09. The main reason is the complexity of said cases. Summing them up in two separate articles would be just not enough to cover everything. And after
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Posted in copyright, CR, injunctions, intellectual property

Messing Up With ‘Krteček’
Czech server Aktualne.cz reports that a toy producer, and exclusive licensee, who is producing various goods depicting main character from the Czech cartoon ‘The Mole’ (Krteček) (on the right) just won the case before Supreme Court of Czech republic (23 Cdo 2500/2010) initiated against a company which was selling the confusingly similar toys without any license from
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Posted in injunctions, Liability of ISPs, safe harbours

European Cases on Ordering ISPs to Block Certain Websites
In the last few months, Huťko noticed exponential rise of the cases that demanded access providers to render certain infringing websites inaccessible to its subscribers. The legal basis is usually national counterpart of the Art. 8(3) of the InfoSoc directive, which provides that “Member States shall ensure that rightholders are in a position to apply
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Posted in Court of Justice, intellectual property, patents, trade marks

Five Interesting & Quite New CJEU Cases
Some recent and interesting IT&IP cases from Luxemburg. Pierre Fabre Dermo-Cosmétique C‑439/09. This relatively unknown decision is actually one of the most important developments of the competition law when it comes to the internet. With AG prof. Mazák, Third Chamber of the Court of Justice held that Article 101(1) TFEU must be interpreted as meaning that, in
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Posted in Court of Justice, DE, ISP, Liability of ISPs, safe harbours

BGH & Two ISP Liability Cases
This week, Bundesgerichtshof decided two very interesting cases that both concern liability of internet service providers. The first, deals with liability of German domain name authority  – DENIC and second with liability of Google for the blog posts published by its users on blogging platform Blogger (the one that Huťko writes his posts on). In
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