Case Law

As we enter a new year, we would like to take this opportunity to pass on our best wishes for 2019 to all of our readers, as well as reflect on developments in copyright over the past year.  Last…

Not for the first time recently, have we seen the granting of copyright protection on a project of interior furnishing. Following the Court of Milan’s ruling which recognised copyright protection of…

 On 12 December 2018 Advocate General (AG) Szpunar delivered his Opinion in Case C-476/17, Pelham. The case concerns the practice of sampling, i.e. the reproduction of minimal parts of a phonogram…

The resale of copyrighted digital sound recordings through a web-based "virtual" marketplace for "pre-owned" digital music operated by ReDigi Inc. was not protected from copyright infringement claims…

 In a decision of 13 November 2018 concerning joined cases T 5909-17 and T 891-18 the Swedish Supreme Court, Högsta domstolen (HD), has decided to ask the CJEU whether the catalogue of acts falling…

 The Madrid Court of Appeal dismissed an appeal filed by the owners of a figurative mark whose central element is a radiant heart, drawn using thick black lines and coloured in red, this being used…

 In law, perhaps one of the most famous aphorisms is “I know it when I see it”, which Justice Potter Stewart used to describe his threshold test for obscenity (in Jacobellis v. Ohio,  378 U.S. 184 …

The 1976 Copyright Act did not preempt applications for attorney fees filed by two auction houses following a determination that the California Resale Royalties Act (CRRA)—a statute that grants…

 On 13 November 2018, the CJEU clarified the scope of EU copyright law by excluding works of taste from copyright protection. This marks the end of a three-year long dispute, which arose in 2015…