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

Domain Names, Metatags & Comparative Advertising
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
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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
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Posted in Art. 12 EcomD, Art. 13 EcomD, Art. 14 EcomD, Court of Justice, defamation, Liability of ISPs

New Preliminary Reference on Safe Harbors From Cyprus
EU Law Radar reports new preliminary reference on eCommerce Directive safe harboring system – Papasavvas C-291/13. The questions arose in a case dealing with liability for libel committed online.  The claimant in this case, Mr Papasavvas, sues for damages in a Cypriot court because he fells that an article in the defendant’s printed newspaper, which
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Posted in Liability of ISPs, personality rights, search engines

Liability for Algorithm Design & Big Data (Google Auto-complete)
The sixth senate of the German Federal Supreme Court (BGH) in March decided a case against Google (VI ZR 269/12) involving a question of its liability for Autocomplete Tool. The case was widely reported around various websites (IPKat, DW, BBC, etc.) as ‘Germany tells Google to tidy up auto-complete’. Few weeks ago, the decision full-text
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Posted in Art. 8(1) EnforD, Art. 8(3) InfoSoc, copyright, in rem injunctions, innocent parties injunctions, Pharma Norwich order, privacy

Are Banks Required to Disclose the Indentity of their Customers to Copyright Holders?
FutureOfCopyright reports very interesting recent Dutch copyright case – BREIN v. ING (Case No. C/13/539327). Local anti-piracy group BREIN sued well known bank and insurance company, ING, for disclosure of identity and bank transfers of one of it’s customers, who is a domain name holder of a website (largest Usenet community in the Netherlands with
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Posted in actio negatoria, Art. 11 EnforD, Art. 8(3) InfoSoc, CJEU, in rem injunctions, injunctions

Injunctions Outside of Tort Law?
Thanks to crowd funding call orchestrated by Jeremy and several extraordinary people from around the world (some of them anonymous), to whom I am greatly indebted for their spontaneous support, I will be able to share one of my recent work-in-progress papers with audience at INTA next week in Dallas. The working version of the
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Posted in CJEU, data protection, EU, personal data, personality rights

Does Use of CCTVs to Protect Your Home From Offenders Fall Outside of EU Data Protection Laws?
This is how we could rephrase a new preliminary reference by the Czech Administrative Supreme Court.  Journalist and former publisher of local newspapers Mr. Ryneš had persisting problems with unknown offenders who attacked him six times and several times damaged his house. Czech Police never found out who they were. Mr. Ryneš thus decided to
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Posted in Art. 11 EnforD, Art. 8(3) InfoSoc, human rights, right to a fair trail, UK, website blocking

What’s Wrong With UK Website Blocking Injunctions?
British courts issued already three website blocking injunctions against five copyright-infringing websites (Newzbin II. + 1 , Dramatico Entertainment + 1 , EMI Records ). In this blog post I don’t want to question the effectiveness of the remedy for copyright cases as I did before (see also J Arnold’s opinion in EMI
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Posted in CJEU, communication to the public, copyright, EU, webstreaming

Retransmission by Internet Stream, CJEU Decides ITV Broadcasting
Television broadcasters may prohibit the retransmission of their programmes by another company via the internet, decided CJEU today in a British reference ITV Broadcasting C-607/11. Defendant in the British proceedings, TVCatchup Ltd (‘TVC’), offers an internet television broadcasting service. This service permits its users to receive, via the internet, ‘live’ streams of free-to-air
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