Tech Notes – Page 6 – IT/IP & Digital Services Act

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

The Slovak Court Orders an ISP to Stop Breaching the Net Neutrality

The first instance court – District Court in Bratislava I., last Thursday issued a preliminary injunction prohibiting continuance of net neutrality breach by one of the Internet access providers. The injunction was granted in a ongoing unfair competition law case between two ISPs, Slovak Antik and Dutch UPC. The case already started in March this

Posted in Art. 8(1) EnforD, banks, CJEU, enforcement, trade marks

New CJEU Case: Are Banks Required to Disclose the Identity of their Customers to Trade Mark Holders?

Some readers might remember my blog post on a Dutch decision BREIN v. ING, which basically asked the question whether banks are required to disclose the identity of their customers to copyright holders. As I indicated already in that blog post, German Federal Supreme Court (BGH) was hearing very similar trade mark case at the

ECHR on Liability of ISPs as a Restriction of Freedom of Speech

Hutko
posted on October 14, 2013April 10, 2021
No Comment

European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg handed down its first “ISP liability” case – Delfi AS v. Estonia (App. No. 64569/09). The case concerns a question of liability of an Internet news portal for third party comments made on its website under one of the news items. First some background: 7. The applicant company

Posted in Art. 5(3), conflicts of laws, copyright, jurisdiction

CJEU Receives a New Case on Online Copyright Infringement & Jurisdiction

The UK IPO reports a new interesting preliminary reference on cross border jurisdiction in copyright law before the Court of Justice of the EU – Hejduk C-441/13. As Pinckley C-170/12 case is very likely to be rejected by the CJEU due to speculation of referring French court, it is good to know that similar questions

Posted in Art. 5 TMD, comparative advertising, keywords, unfair comptetition

Domain Names, Metatags & Comparative Advertising

Hutko
posted on September 1, 2013April 10, 2021
2 Comments

CJEU in summer decided an very interesting technology related case – Belgian Electronic Sorting Technology (BEST) C-657/11. The case might have strong consequences for both the domain name dispute resolution and search engine optimization – SEO (assuming that metatags still matter at least a little bit). The BEST case is an unfair competition case. The

Posted in data protection, personal data, privacy, search engines

Some Notes on AG’s Opinion in Google Spain Case

Being in almost summer off-mode, I finally found some time to read AG’s Opinion in Google Spain C-131/12. I was personally quite surprised to find there many references to eCommerce Directive safe harbors and secondary liability in the data protection law. Here are my notes with relevant passages. But let me start with super short