Copyright

On 29 October 2012, the UK’s All-Party Parliamentary Intellectual Property Group published a report examining the Government’s role in promoting and protecting intellectual property (IP).  According to the report, which is based on the written submissions of almost 60 interested bodies, Government departments often fail to understand the importance of IP to the growth of UK’s economy. The report also criticizes the UK’s Intellectual Property Office (IPO) for having lost the confidence of a large number of its main stakeholders in its IP policy-making and recommends that greater ministerial leadership will be exercised over the IPO’s activities.  While the report welcomes the IPO’s increased investment in research, the Office is critiqued for failing to view IP as a property right and promoting the creation and development of new IP.
Continue Reading UK Government Urged to Champion Intellectual Property Rights

As first reported by Timothy B. Lee of Ars Technica, on October 10, 2012, a district court judge handed down a decision in Authors Guild v. HathiTrust.  Hathitrust is a long-running copyright infringement case concerning a shared digital repository based at the Univerity of Michigan.

The case is related to the actions brought against Google over the company’s Books Library project, on which we have reported here and here.  The Michigan university library together with a number of other universities formed a repository called the HathiTrust Digital Library (HDL), which contains digital copies of books scanned by Google as part of the Books Library project.  The HDL uses the files for three purposes: a full-text search, preservation, and access for disabled people who cannot read printed copies of the books.  The full-text search is a technology which allows users to search for particular terms across all the works stored in the HDL without revealing any in-copyright material.Continue Reading District Court Accepts Fair Use in Book Scanning Case

Google and the Association of American Publishers (AAP) announced on October 4 that they have entered into a settlement agreement in a seven-year dispute over the search company’s Google Books Library project.  The project, which seeks to create a searchable digital archive of books from several major libraries around the world, has been the…
Continue Reading Google and Publishers Reach Settlement in Book Digitization Case

California Governor Jerry Brown signed into law two pieces of legislation on September 27, paving the way for the creation of free, open-source digital textbooks for 50 of the most popular lower-division courses in California’s public colleges and universities.  SB 1052 establishes the California Open Education Resources Council.  This body is tasked with selecting the 50 courses and developing a competitive process through which “faculty members, publishers, and other interested parties” may seek funding to create textbooks for the designated courses.  The textbooks are to be made available to students in the selected courses for free online, or in hard copy for $20.

SB 1052 also sets out criteria for the textbooks themselves.  Most notably, it requires that the textbooks be “placed under a creative commons attribution license that allows others to use, distribute, and create derivative works based upon the digital material while still allowing the authors or creators to receive credit for their efforts.” 
Continue Reading California to Offer Open Source Textbooks under Creative Commons Licenses

Yesterday, the European Council issued its final approval for the Orphan Works Directive.  See our previous blog post about the Directive’s approval by the Parliament here.  The Council’s approval marks the last stage in the Directive’s legislative process.

The Directive will now go on to be published in the EU’s Official Journal in the…
Continue Reading Update: Orphan Works Directive Receives Final Approval from European Council

InfoCuria and the UK Intellectual Property Office have released new information about a recent question referred to the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) from the German Federal Supreme Court (Bundesgerichthof).  In essence, the reference asks the CJEU whether European courts, when considering copyright infringement in their territories, may deem contributory acts of infringement in other Member States as also having taken place within their jurisdiction.

More specifically, the reference, named HI HOTEL HCF (Case C-387-12) asks the CJEU to consider whether a court in one Member State has jurisdiction to rule both on a copyright infringement that occurred in its Member State, but also on the “contributing act” to that copyright infringement which took place in the territory of a second Member State by a person who assisted in the principal infringement on the domestic territory.  The CJEU is asked to interpret Article 5(3) of the Brussels I Regulation (Regulation 44/2001), which sets out that, for matters relating to tort (or, in civil law jurisdictions, delict or quasi-delict) a person domiciled in a Member State may be sued in another Member State if that is where the “harmful event” occurred or may occur.  The key question in the context of a cross-border copyright infringement is therefore where the “harmful event” occurs.
Continue Reading German Court Refers Question on Cross-Border Copyright Infringement to the CJEU

On September 27, 2012, the European Commission released its Communication strategy paper on cloud computing.  The strategy, in development for over a year, advocates a range of new measures to help Europe capitalise on the growth of cloud computing and increase Europe’s rate of cloud adoption.  See further below for some of the major new policies.
Continue Reading European Cloud Computing Strategy Raises Questions Over Future of Private Copy Levies

On September 13, 2012, the European Parliament approved the text of a new draft Directive that sets out permitted uses of orphan works (the “Directive”).  However, the law’s text — which was informally agreed between the Parliament and European Council earlier this summer — has yet to receive the Council’s formal approval, so remains a draft for now.
Continue Reading European Parliament Approves Draft Orphan Works Directive

A long-running copyright infringement action by the Authors Guild (a non-profit authors’ organization) against Google has been temporarily placed on pause.  On Monday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit granted Google’s unopposed motion for a stay pending its interlocutory appeal of class certification in The Authors Guild, Inc., et al. v. Google, …
Continue Reading Second Circuit Stays Google Books Case Pending Class Certification Appeal

InfoCuria has released information about a case recently referred to the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) from Tribunale di Milano in Italy.  While the Court has yet to provide detailed underlying factual information, the case appears to raise issues that will be important to companies that rely on the EU Copyright Directive’s anti-circumvention provisions to protect their copyrighted works.
Continue Reading Italian Court Refers Question to the CJEU Regarding Circumvention of Technological Copyright Protections