Source: http://the1709blog.blogspot.de/2015_09_01_archive.html
Timestamp: 2017-06-24 22:33:23
Document Index: 776895470

Matched Legal Cases: ['CJEU ', 'CJEU\n', 'CJEU ', 'CJEU ', 'CJEU\n', 'CJEU ', 'Art. 13', 'Art 13', 'Art 2', 'Art 13']

The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) has now released Marrakesh Notification No. 10: Marrakesh Treaty to Facilitate Access to Published Works for Persons Who Are Blind, Visually Impaired or Otherwise Print Disabled. As its title suggests, it reflects the deposit by the Government of Mongolia last week of its instrument of ratification of the Marrakesh Treaty. Readers of this weblog can probably chant in their sleep the mantra that The date of entry into force of the said Treaty will be notified when the required number of ratifications or accessions is reached in accordance with Article 18 of the said Treaty.
As we know, copyright protection raises thorny issues of originality (in short expressions) and trademark registration for such expressions is often complicated by their inherently promotional and laudatory nature. However, a recent (June 9, 2015) ruling by the French Cour de cassation reminds us that general tort law should not be ignored in such cases and, in particular, in French law what is called parasitisme or parasitical conduct. Cora, a retailer that had been using the advertising slogan “large volumes
= low prices” (gros volumes = petits
prix) for 25 years, took legal action against Auchan for committing what it felt were acts of parasitical conduct by distributing catalogues featuring the slogans
‘mini prices for large volumes’ (prix
mini sur gros volumes), ‘large volumes at mini prices’ (gros volumes à prix mini) and ‘large volumes big savings’ (gros volumes grosses économies).
The Cour de cassation upheld the factual
analysis of the lower court, which had held in favour of the plaintiff and stated that “Parasitism, for commercial traders, exists where one entity rides
on the coattails of another by unduly benefiting from its repute or
investments, irrespective of any risk of confusion”. Following a
syntactical, phonetic and visual analysis of the slogans at issue, the court found that the
combination of two groups of three-syllable words ‘gros volumes’ and ‘petit
prix’ placed on equal footing is not a part of common everyday language. It also found that the association
of the two phrases to be original and distinctive of Cora. Auchan
used identical syntactical structure in forming its slogans, merely replacing
the sign ‘=’ in Cora’s slogan with a coma, where the use of words ‘prix mini
sur gros volumes’ and ‘gros volumes à prix mini’ had a resonance that was
parallel to that of Cora's. Moreover, Auchan’s use of slogans, even after repeated warnings given by Cora, did not seem to be mere coincidence as
there were numerous other ways to express the same idea. Finally, the court noted that Cora had carried out multiple advertising campaigns that contributed to its
Raanan Katz , the real estate mogul and owner of the Miami Heat basketball team, has learned about copyright law the hard (and expensive) way. Irina Chevaldina,an unhappy former tenant of Katz’s company, copied a rather unflattering photograph of Katz taken by photographer Seffi Magriso onto her blog which was highly critical of Katz. Unhappy about this, Katz acquired the photo’s copyright, and then claimed Chevaldina had infringed his newly acquired copyright. The District Court gave the claim short shrift - and applying the standard tests they found fair use, and in particular found: The nature of the use was non-commercial - Chevaldina used the photo to criticise, ridiule and satirize Katz; and because Katz acquired the photo to block any publication, Chevaldina's use could not have any effect on the marketplace: "Due to Katz’s attempt to utilize copyright as an instrument of censorship against unwanted criticism, there is no potential market for his work", concluding "“every reasonable factfinder would conclude the inclusion of the Photo in her blog posts constituted fair use.” Chevaldina was awarded her attorney's fees. Shares of in Pandora Media, the Internet radio company have jumped by 5.3% after the firm received good news in an ongoing fight over royalties. The company said it "was pleased that the U.S. Registrar of Copyrights agreed that the company's pact with Merlin Network, a global rights agency for independent musicians, was admissible as a benchmark in royalty proceedings before the Copyright Royalty Board according to a Reuters report. In May The Federal Communications Commission gave Pandora Media permission to buy a small radio station in South Dakota in a move to obtain lower royalty rates. ASCAP's objection to the acquisition of the terrestrial radio station was finally put to rest by the FCC last week .The agency rejected the performance rights organization's request for reconsideration of its original ruling.
And finally, the he much delayed extradition hearing of the former management team of MegaUpload has begin in New Zealand, despite lawyers for MegaUpload founder Kim Dotcom and his former colleagues again trying to get their clients' extradition case pushed back, not least as court imposed restrictions on funds mean Dotcom and his colleagues cannot hire U.S based experts in U.S. copyright and criminal law. Posted by
It waxs hard enough to work out who 'owned' the infamous Ellen DeGeneres Oscar's selfie. But a monkey? PETA have used the courts before but not with any great success: In 2011 PETA filed a lawsuit against marine park operator SeaWorld, alleging five wild-captured orca whales were treated like slaves. A San Diego court dismissed the case
In the USA, a federal judge has found that the song "Happy Birthday To You" is entirely in the public domain. U.S. District Judge George H. King held in a summary judgment that the song's original copyright, assigned Clayton F. Summy, who copyrighted and published them in a book titled "Song Stories for the Kindergarten" is now free of copyright claims. The rights to the song were bought for $15 million in 1988 by music publisher Warner/Chappell Music Inc. Any copyright now only covered specific piano arrangements of the song and not its lyrics. “It now belongs to the public,” Mark Rifkin, a lawyer representing a documentary filmmaker who filed the suit against the publisher told reporters adding "We did exhaustive historical research and none of it showed that the publisher owned anything other than copyrights to four very specific piano arrangements". One of the co-plaintiffs, Ruypa Marya of the music group Ruypa & The April Fishes, also praised the decision as momentous, saying "I hope we can start reimagining copyright law to do what it's supposed to do — protect the creations of people who make stuff so that we can continue to make more stuff." Marya, said she had paid Warner/Chappell $455 to include the song on a live album during which members of her band and audience sang the song to her the night before her birthday.
With the music accepted as public domain, the Plaintiffs advanced three arguments as to why the lyrics were not, in fact, in copyright: Firstly, they questioned whether orginial writter Patty Hill had written the specific 'Happy Birthday' lyrics, because of other use of similar lyrics before sister claimed they were Patty's lyrics during a deposition as part of a 1935 lawsuit.
"Because Summy Co. never acquired the rights to the 'Happy Birthday' lyrics, defendants, as Summy Co.'s purported successors-in-interest, do not own a valid copyright in the Happy Birthday lyrics," King concluded in his 43-page ruling. The lawsuit also asked for monetary damages and restitution of more than $5 million in licensing fees it said in 2013 that Warner/Chappell had collected from thousands of people and groups who've paid to use the song over the years. That matter is still pending
Happy birthday. copyright
The Royal Society, 6-9 Carlton House TerraceLondon, SW1Y 5AG
For more information, the full agenda and to register, visit the cbbc.org Posted by
china symposium,
A few months ago the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU)
issued a very interesting and definitely important decision concerning whether
mere advertisement for sale of copyright-protected works falls within the scope
of the right of distribution as per Article 4 of the InfoSoc Directive.
The decision in Dimensione Direct Sales
and Michele Labianca v Knoll International, C-516/13 (Labianca) was
noted by the IPKat here, but not by this very blog.
Thankfully talented IP enthusiast Nedim Malovic (Stockholm
University) has come to our rescue with this thoughtful note that will be also
published in the Journal of Intellectual Property Law & Practice soon.
Here's what Nedim writes: "This reference
for a preliminary ruling arose from a dispute between two Italian companies,
Dimensione Direct Sales (Dimensione) and Knoll International SpA (Knoll). Knoll
manufactured furniture - including chairs,
stools, couches and tables - to which it also held the copyright, and sold it
globally. Dimensione traded in furniture and distributed it around Europe, also
offering it for sale on its website.
Knoll brought
proceedings before a German court, claiming that the items offered for sale by
Dimensione were counterfeit versions of its protected designs. Following
Knoll’s victory at both first instance and in appeal, the Bundesgerichtshof
(the German Federal Court of Justice) decided to refer a number of questions to
the CJEU, these being whether: (1) the distribution right under
Article 4(1) of Directive 2001/29 (the InfoSoc Directive) would include
the right to offer the original or copies of a work to the public for sale and,
if so, (2) the right to offer the original or copies of a work to the public
for sale would include not only contractual offers, but also advertising
measures; (3) the distribution right may be infringed even if no purchase of
the original or copies of the work takes place on the basis of such offer.
Not just beautiful:Knoll's Wassily chair,one of the pieces of "high-value furniture"at the centre of the national litigation ...
response The CJEU answered all
the three questions in the affirmative, finding that Article 4(1) of the
InfoSoc Directive allows the copyright holder to distribute a protected work
and prevent an offer for sale or a targeted advertisement of the original or a
copy of that work.
This is the case even
if it is not established that the advertisement in question gives rise to the
purchase of the original or a copy of the copyright work by a buyer. It
suffices that the advertisement invites a consumer to purchase it. The CJEU
supported this reasoning on the basis of its previous judgments in Donner [here], and Blomqvist [here], in which it had held that the
distribution to the public is characterised by a series of acts going, at
the very least, from the conclusion of a contract of sale to the
performance thereof by delivery to a member of the public.
Court, use of the phrase "at the very
least" in those judgments means that “it is not excluded that the
acts or steps preceding the conclusion of a contract of sale may also fall
within the concept of distribution and be reserved, exclusively, to the holders
of copyright.” (para 26) It
follows that even an invitation to submit an offer, or a non-binding
advertisement for a protected object may be considered as falling under the
scope of Article 4(1). As such, "[t]here
may be an infringement of the exclusive distribution right, under
Article 4(1) of [the InfoSoc Directive], where a trader, who does not hold
the copyright, sells protected works or copies thereof and addresses an
advertisement, through its website, by direct mail or in the press, to
consumers located in the territory of the Member State in which those works are
protected in order to invite them to purchase it.” (para 31)
this end, “it is irrelevant, for a finding of an infringement of the
distribution right, that such advertising is not followed by the transfer of
ownership of the protected work or a copy thereof to the purchaser." (para
... also makes a comfortable seat(dog not referred to CJEU though)
this approach could be seen as a departure from its previous ruling in Cassina [here], in which it held that
the distribution to the public only takes place where there is a transfer of
the ownership of that object (paras 33, 36 and 41). However, similarly to what
Advocate General Cruz Villalón held in his Opinion in Labianca (para
32) [here], the CJEU stressed how the
particular outcome in that case was justified in light of its peculiar factual
background, which consisted of displaying in public unauthorised reproductions
of copyright works. In the case at hand, instead, Dimensione made unequivocally clear its intention
to market the alleged infringing furniture. Even if no sale or actual delivery
of infringing goods actually occurred, the fact that the consumers
were invited, by targeted advertising, to acquire ownership of the original or
copy of the work in question, would suffice to trigger application of Article
an actual sale to have an act of distribution, although seemingly in line with
earlier rulings in Donner and Blomqvist, this CJEU
decision appears to have extended the scope of the distribution right, up to
the point of potentially blurring (further) the distinction between acts of
distribution and acts of communication/making available to the public, the
latter as per Article 3 of the InfoSoc Directive. The implications of this
What however seems
clearer is that this judgment may have made an (additional) aspect of UK
copyright incompatible with EU law. Section 18 of the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act 1988 defines the distribution right as the “right to issue” to the
public copies of a protected work, ie putting into circulation
in the European Economic Area copies of such work not previously put into
circulation therein. There seems to be consensus that the act of offering or exposing copies for sale could
not be considered as akin to putting copies into circulation. As such, UK
distribution right currently appears narrower in scope than its InfoSoc
counterpart. Whether this is acceptable may be doubtful following this latest
CJEU instalment on Article 4(1) of the InfoSoc Directive."
C-516/13; Nedim Malovic,
Dimensione Direct Sales and Michele Labianca v Knoll International,
distribution right,
One of the music industry's ongoing targets is a wholesale revision of 'safe harbour' (or even 'safe harbor') provisions in both the European Union and the United States of America - arguing that they both facilitate piracy and disadvantage properly licensed services. Now another 'search engine' is on the horizon, no doubt aiming to take advantage of those generous protections, but one that has already been labelled as both the "new Grooveshark" and the "Popcorn Time of music". So what is it? Well its called Aurous and the new music platform that grabs content from P2P sharing networks and other online platforms (Aurous can easily import all your favourite playlists from other services like Spotify, Pandora ....) - and is set to go live on Mac, Windows and Linux from next month, albeit in an alpha testing format. Planned funding reportedly will come primarily from banner adverts. Presuming Aurous will have a functioning take down system - will it be accepted as legitimate? Or go the way of The Pirate Bay, Grooveshark and Limewire and face significant (or terminal) challenges for copyright infringement - whether directly or indirectly facilitating violations? That remains to be seen. For now, unfurl the spinnaker, hoist the mainsail, scuttle the jib and weigh anchors!
mailbu media,
In her order Judge Williams said that "Hustlin'," as a song, is protected by copyright. But Ross' three-word slogan, is made up of ordinary words and cannot be copyrighted. Judge Williams compared it to other music catch-phrases from the past, such as "you got the right one, uh-huh," "holla back," and "we get it poppin'," saying it is a "short expression of the sort that courts have uniformly held uncopyrightable." saying: "The question ... is not whether the lyrics of 'Hustlin', as arranged in their entirety, are subject to copyright protection, the question is whether the use of a three word phrase appearing in the musical composition, divorced from the accompanying music, modified, and subsequently printed on merchandise, constitutes an infringement of the musical composition 'Hustlin'".
The Director General of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) presents his compliments to the Minister for Foreign Affairs and has the honor to notify the deposit by the Government of the Republic of Moldova, on September 4, 2015, of its instrument of ratification of the Beijing Treaty on Audiovisual Performances, adopted at Beijing on June 24, 2012. The date of entry into force of the said Treaty will be notified when the required number of ratifications or accessions is reached in accordance with Article 26 of the said Treaty.
When we report cases of
copyright infringement, we all too often concentrate just on the arguments and
evidence which lead to the outcome at trial: the winners and losers. For obvious reasons it
is rarely possible to look in detail at those cases which settle,
because the agreements usually bind the parties to confidentiality,
and slightly less rarely do we examine the separate hearings in which
quantum is assessed and awarded. There are two possible reasons
why these hearings are less commented upon: they are intrinsically less interesting as they have little bearing on
the law per se (ie they tend to be very fact specific to each case
therefore hard to draw inferences from), and they also tend to be less
extensively reported on Bailii and in the law reports.
However for those less
conversant with litigation - and this includes the growing number of
litigants in person - the process(es) by which quantum is assessed
can form an important element when considering whether to fight or
settle. For the layman to only consider such matters as the likely
damages after liability has been established, is rather too late. And
from lawyer’s point of view, occasionally a costs hearing can
involve a determining of which law which should be applied.
And so it was with a
recent judgment from the IPEC under His Honour Judge Hacon in the
matter of Absolute Lofts Ltd v Artisan Home Improvements Ltd and Anor
[2015] EWHC 2608 (IPEC). The case provides both a welcome insight
into the current thinking on assessing quantum in copyright cases,
and the extent to which the UK law may be at variance with the EU Enforcement Directive (2004/48 EC) (pdf) brought into force by the
Intellectual Property (Enforcement etc) Regulations 2006. This is the
second time that Judge Hacon has published a judgment concerning an
inquiry into damages - the first being Henderson v All Around The World Recordings Ltd, which was a case about unpaid royalties and
performer’s rights, reported on by Eleonora here. Returning to the
current case, it is only necessary to set out the facts in the most outline of terms, because the defendant admitted
liability at trial. The claimant, Absolute Lofts, is as its name
suggests, a company which specialises in loft conversions. It is
based and operates in London and has its own website. The owner of
the company, Mr Craig Colton takes photographs of work he has
completed and posts them on his company's website. There was no
dispute that he owned the copyright in these images and that he had
assigned the copyright to his company.
Improvements Limited is a company operating in the Bradford area. In
around 2009, the company's owner (and second defendant) Mr Darren
Ludbrook expanded his existing small building business to include the
loft conversion market. He needed images of conversions for his
website in order generate interest in this new area of work. Although
he blamed his website designer, the court found that he either took
21 images from the website of Absolute Lofts and included them on
the Artisan website, or there were reasonable grounds for believing
he knew they were infringing images. The fact that potential
customers of Artisan were being misled in this way was not at issue
in the proceedings, although the judge took this into account when
assessing Mr Ludbrook’s integrity and general approach to business.
In something of a
departure from the normal structure of a court judgment, Judge Hacon
first outlined in some detail the methodology chosen to calculate
the quantum, before addressing the law which governs the
awarding of damages. In this case, the so-called 'user principle' was
followed. This principle is based on the construction by the court of
a hypothetical negotiation between claimant and defendant before the
act complained of, where each party would have been acting willingly
and without duress to achieve the same state of affairs (ie the use
of the 21 images) in a legal way. This differs from quantum based on
presumed (or provable) losses suffered by the claimant, or the
presumed ( or provable) profits made by the defendant arising out of
the infringement. The first thing the
court looked at were the alternatives to using Mr Colton's images: Mr
Ludbrook could have commissioned his own photographer, or he could
have purchased licensed images from a stock agency (which is
ultimately what he did, once the letter before action was received
and he was obliged to take down Mr Coltan's images). Counsel for each side
provided their own estimates, supported by expert testimony, of the
cost of commissioning 21 similar photographs, which ranged between
£9,000 (the claimant's figure) and £700 (the defendant's lowest estimate), but the court rejected this analysis on the basis
that Mr Ludbrook was seen as a man "prepared to use the cheapest
images he could find that looked good enough and could pass for
photos of loft conversions done by Artisan" [22]. Instead, the
judge took the view that the best evidence was provided by what
actually happened when Mr Ludbrook was forced to find substitute
images - he obtained them from a stock agency for a total of £300.
This was the level of ordinary damages the court awarded.
The claimant had also
sought aggravated damages under Section 97(2) of the CDPA. This
subsection says a court may award additional damages having regard to
all the circumstances, but in particular to the flagrancy of the
infringement and any benefit accruing to the defendant by reason of
the infringement. However the judge found that he needed to consider
whether s 97(2) had been made redundant by the Enforcement Directive,
specifically Art. 13(1). This came about because the UK Regulations
which brought the Directive into force, state in Reg 3 (2) that
damages may be awarded based on taking all appropriate aspects into
account (this would include those factors covered in s 97(2)), or
damages based royalties or fees which would have been due if the
parties had agreed beforehand (the user principle outlined above).
However this strict either/or approach was not to be found to be so
rigid in the Directive (Art 13 1a and 1b). In the directive, the
wording for the second condition is: damages “such as at least the
amount of royalties or fees …” (my added emphasis). The court
decided at [48] that the Directive thus allowed the national courts
to consider additional damages, such as those contemplated by s
97(2), since Art 2 of the Directive permitted national differences in
the means of enforcement if they were more favourable for
rightholders than those provided for in the Directive. On this basis
the court felt it was appropriate to award additional damages on the
basis of the indirect benefits the defendant gained from the
infringement, that is to say the increased business in loft
conversions following the use of the images on the website. The
business accounts for Artisan over the relevant period were
inadequate to show the actual profits but turnover was clearly
substantial (around £500,000 in 2013 for example), and it had to be
assumed that this was in part due to orders won of the strength of
the website. The judge awarded an extra £6,000 in damages under
this head. This figure would have been the same he concluded, whether it was calculated
under the Art 13(1) process, or s 97(2) CDPA. This is a somewhat
simplified version of the judgment, which interested readers are
encouraged to read for themselves in order to gain the full nuance
of the deliberations.
“YOU [the licensee of the images] MAY NOT”: [...] 12. Use an Image in a manner that infringes upon any third party’s