In Lithuania, a travel agency ran a computerised online travel system which offered customers various package tours. However, when it came to offering customers discounts on the price of their holiday, the computer system put a ceiling on the maximum amount of discount which a customer could be offered. It was a computerised booking system that was used by many travel agents. Is this not an example of price-fixing among members of a concerted practice and thus contrary to Article 101 TFEU?
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Case C-41/14, Christie’s France – the single market in reselling art works ‘Going! Going! Gone!’
When original works of art are resold, the EU’s artists’ resale right Directive 2001/84/EC requires that a royalty is paid to the author of the work by the seller. The Directive goes on to allow either the seller or professional sellers, such as art galleries, to share the liability for paying the royalty in accordance with national law. In this case, a French auction house decided to change its terms and conditions so that the buyer, and not the seller, became liable to pay the royalty. Can contract derogate from the seller’s obligation to pay the royalty that is enshrined in the Directive?
Continue readingCase C-30/14, Ryanair – grounding a go compare an airfare website
Price-comparison websites in the EU are often lawful because the websites they take their information from are databases frequently unprotected by either copyright or the ‘sui generis’ right enshrined in the EU’s Database Directive 96/9/EC. This is true of Ryanair’s website. But Ryanair’s website is however protected by a plank of deviant Dutch ‘copyright’ law. In this case, a Dutch website that compares the price of airfares is seeking to rely on a Dutch exception to the Dutch ‘copyright’ rule, an exception that corresponds to one found in the EU’s Database Directive. The legal question has become whether the Directive applies to all databases and thus websites – even the unprotected ones – and, if so, whether the price-comparison website qualifies as a ‘lawful user’, who does not need to obtain Ryanair’s consent to use Ryanair’s website.
Continue readingCase C-419/13, Art & Allposters International – from paper art poster to canvas picture
When a company takes paper posters of famous art works and puts them onto canvas, is the company infringing an author’s right to control the distribution of a copyright-protected work as enshrined in Article 4 of the EU’s InfoSoc Directive 2001/29?
Continue readingCase C-98/13, Martin Blomqvist – deliberately purchasing a fake Rolex from China
When a consumer deliberately buys a fake Rolex from a Chinese website and then Danish customs seizes the watch, is the watch to be destroyed without compensation?
Continue readingCase C-348/13, BestWater International – objecting to the embedding of videos
Where a company’s website allows a visitor to view a video that has actually been made by a rival company, can the rival rely on the EU’s InfoSoc Directive 2001/29 to stop its video from being shown?
Continue readingCase C-291/13, Papasavvas – online libel, defamation and injurious falsehood
To what degree does the EU’s E-Commerce Directive 2000/31 cover online libel, defamation and injurious falsehood?
Continue readingCase C-279/13, C More Entertainment – skating on thin ice with embedded links in EU copyright law
Where a person puts a clickable link on his website enabling visitors to watch sports matches for free, then does this constitute a ‘communication to the public’ under the EU’s InfoSoc Directive 2001/29?
Continue readingCase C-466/12, Svensson – hyperlinks and communicating works to the public
Does putting a hyperlink on a website constitute a copyright-relevant ‘communication to the public’ under the EU’s InfoSoc Directive 2001/29?
Continue readingCase C-463/12, Copydan Båndkopi – Danish private-copy ‘fair compensation’ and EU copyright law
For the purposes of the EC’s InfoSoc Directive 2001/29, must Nokia pay a Danish collecting society the private-copy ‘fair compensation’ levy when importing memory cards into Denmark for use in its mobile telephones?
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