Tech Notes – Page 5 – digital innovation & civil liberties (+DSA)

Posted in Art. 5(3), Court of Justice, jurisdiction

CJEU Confirms Pinckney Ruling

For all the private international law & IP law enthusiast, it might of interest that in the meantime of waiting for Coty Prestige C-360/12 ruling, the CJEU issued its Hi Hotel C-387/12 ruling last week (without an advice from Advocate General). Hi Hotel partially pre-determines the outcome of Coty Prestige with the main message –

Posted in Art. 11 EnforD, Art. 8(3) InfoSoc, CJEU, website blocking, webstreaming

CJEU Allowed Website Blocking Injunctions With Some Reservations

So the CJEU finally issued its UPC Telekabel Wien C-314/12 decision. It contains several good points, but also some missed opportunities (the rejections of a need of specific measures is quite a disappointment), and black-box type of issues, where only the time will tell. But before I get to the ruling, it is very interesting

Posted in actio negatoria, CZ, domain names, ECHR

Czech Constitutional Court: Domain Name Protected as a Property

The Czech Constitutional Court this month handed its anticipated decision in globtour.cz case (III. ÚS 2912/12). The Court heard a constitutional complaint by one of the plaintiffs who complained that his right to fair trial, right to property and right to legal certainty were infringed when the Czech Supreme Court rejected the domain name transfer

Posted in CJEU, communication to the public, copyright, linking

CJEU: Hyperlinks Are Copyright Free. Are They Really?

Highly awaited Svensson C-466/12 ruling of the CJEU is now available online. It will be most likely positively received by the European media. And probably rightly so. Despite this, however, I can not help to (preliminary) question two basic issues in the ruling: Assumption of the authorized (source) content; CJEU carries out the entire analysis

Spanish Court Issued The First Disconnecting Injunction Against a Single Access Provider

A good friend, Miquel Peguera from Spanish Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, just reported what is probably the first private litigation, where an access provider was sued to disconnect its subscribers from the Internet. Although some Nordic countries already earlier reported cases where access providers were sued to disconnect different providers of allegedly infringing services, Promusicae

Posted in CJEU, data scraping, database right, search engines

Meta Search Engines Likely to Infringe Database Right by Data Scraping

The Christmas time drowned out publication of a particularly interesting CJEU decision – Innoweb C‑202/12 – dealing with the EU-specific database right and its applicability to meta search engines. The preliminary reference before the CJEU came from a Dutch proceedings of Wegener group against Innoweb BV and its operation of a dedicated car meta search

Posted in Art. 14 EcomD, Art. 15 EcomD, DE, defamation, hosting, personality rights

German Court: Wikipedia Must Act Upon Notice

Techdir few days ago reported that Higher Regional Court of Stuttgart (OLG Stuttgart) held that “Wikimedia is liable for contents of Wikipedia articles”. This very inflated headline of course caught attention of many, including mine. The outcome, however, does not seem to be so dramatic as the headline suggests (Mike Masnick rectifies possible misunderstanding in

AG: Website Blocking Is Compatible With The Union Law

Advocate General Pedro Cruz Villalón just published his opinion in UPC Telekabel Wien C‑314/12 case. He concludes that in principle website blocking is permissible injunction against an innocent intermediary. Because the opinion is not yet available in English, I summarize below only some points, that I found to be the most important: § 59: the

Posted in Art. 5(3), CJEU, conflicts of laws, EU, intellectual property, jurisdiction

Is Pinckney Dangerous Law?

I wanted to post this comment since CJEU in October this year handed its perplexing Pinckney C-170/12 ruling. When this Thursday Advocate General Jääskinen published its opinion in Coty Prestige C-360/12, I felt obliged to go back to its confusing language and arguments and point out why Pinckney is a bad law. My regular readers

Google Books Decision – The Second Best Outcome?

Judge Denny Chin’s Google Books ruling sparked a considerable amount of welcome reaction. It is submitted that everybody, not just Google, will now greatly benefit from broader fair use defence, that it is a “huge victory for online innovation” and a “big win for libraries and researchers”. But is the decision really the first best