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BREAKING: CJEU rules that freedom of information and of the press cannot justify a derogation from the rights of copyright holders beyond allowed exceptions and limitations - The IPKat
Home / #IPKat / CJEU / EU copyright / freedom of the press / fundamental rights / Funke Medien C-469/17 / military reports / originality / BREAKING: CJEU rules that freedom of information and of the press cannot justify a derogation from the rights of copyright holders beyond allowed exceptions and limitations
Eleonora Rosati Monday, July 29, 2019 - #IPKat, CJEU, EU copyright, freedom of the press, fundamental rights, Funke Medien C-469/17, military reports, originality
The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) might be already on holiday, but this morning a final round of decisions was issued, including 3 keenly awaited Grand Chamber (15 judges) copyright judgments.
They are the decisions in:
Funke Medien, C-469/17 [Katpost here]
Pelham, C-476/17 [Katposts here and here]
Spiegel Online, C-516/17 [Katpost here]
What these cases had in common is essentially two things:
First, they required the CJEU to weigh on the interplay between copyright and fundamental rights;
Second, the Advocate General (AG) in all cases was AG Szpunar.
Let's start from the first one, Funke Medien.
The reference was made in the context of litigation between German Government and a newspaper over the unauthorized publication, by the latter, of the so called 'Afghanistan Papers', that is confidential military reports on the operations of German armed forces in that region in between 2005 and 2012.
In his Opinion, AG Szpunar doubted at the outset that a military report would be even protectable by copyright.
He also noted that in any case copyright contains internal control mechanisms (exceptions and limitations) and is subject to external limitations (protection of other fundamental rights). With regard to the latter, he submitted that, even where copyright subsists, protection might be denied/restricted on fundamental rights grounds. In his view, this should be the case in the national background proceedings, also because copyright should not be invoked to unduly restrict freedom of information, where no public interest would justify such restriction.
In today's judgment, the CJEU ruled that freedom of information and the freedom of the press (as also recognized in the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights) cannot justify a derogation from the rights of copyright holders beyond the exceptions and limitations set out in the InfoSoc Directive.
While the text of the ruling is not yet available, the press release states:
In today’s judgment, the Court makes clear that it is for the national court, first of all, to ascertain whether the conditions are satisfied so that military status reports are protected by copyright. Those reports can be protected by copyright only if they are an intellectual creation of their author that reflects the author’s personality and are expressed by free and creative choices made by that author in drafting those reports.
A more detailed analysis will follow as soon as the text of the judgment becomes available.
BREAKING: CJEU rules that freedom of information and of the press cannot justify a derogation from the rights of copyright holders beyond allowed exceptions and limitations Reviewed by Eleonora Rosati on Monday, July 29, 2019 Rating: 5