Not a day had elapsed since elections to the board of directors at the Sociedad General de Autores y Editores (SGAE), Spain's largest copyright collecting society, when civil guard officers suddenly…
In a somewhat surprising move, on 12 July 2011 the lower house of the Spanish Parliament urged the Government to abolish the so-called "canon digital" (the private copying levy on digital media) and…
Guest Blog by Pamela Samuelson, Berkeley Law School
Are programming languages, program functionality, and data interfaces protectable by copyright law or not? These questions were highly…
On the 24th of May 2011 the European Commission has issued a Communication containing its Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs) strategy. The document has a promising title: “A Single Market for…
One of the recent judgements of the Polish Supreme Court provides a good opportunity to review the basic rules applying to copyright contracts in Poland. The Polish copyright law treats copyright…
For years, consumer representatives, citizen rights groups and academics have lobbied for a better balance between the interests of rights holders and consumers in copyright law. In particular the…
On 21 October 2010, the European Court of Justice rendered its judgement in case C-467/08 Padawan v SGAE, calling the current application of Spanish private copying levy into question.
The judgement…
The question, whether software licences for computer programs that were purchased in an intangible form (via download from the sellers' server) can be resold by the first acquirer and used by the…
On 16 June 2011 the Court of Justice of the European Union gave judgment in Case C-462/09, Stichting de Thuiskopie v. Opus Supplies Deutschland GmbH, Mijndert van der Lee and Hananja van der Lee (…
The dust has now settled on the Hargreaves Review – officially known as “A Review of Intellectual Property and Growth” - which was published during May 2011. The main focus of Professor Ian…
