Original news and analysis on international IP policy
The World Intellectual Property Organization this week released the decision in an internet domain name dispute in which the current incarnation of the once-wildly successful Napster music-sharing website successfully forced a website called napster.fm to shut down over intellectual property rights violations. Is Napster still cool?
A 3 September European Court of Justice decision on the concept of “parody” is a controversial attempt to harmonise copyright law judicially where legislative efforts have failed, and raises more questions than it answers, intellectual property lawyers said. But the decision won't affect implementation of the United Kingdom's new copyright exception for parody, the UK Intellectual Property Office said.
In a longstanding World Trade Organization dispute about measures affecting the cross-border supply of gambling and betting services, Antigua and Barbuda has made a new proposal to the United States on a way to solve the issue of the US not complying with a WTO ruling it lost. And in a separate matter at the same WTO meeting last week, Cuba referred to the US failure to change a law barring a rum trademark in the context of railing against US policy of "economic suffocation" of the island nation.
The recent case of a monkey selfie that went viral on the web raised thorny issues of ownership between a (human) photographer and Wikimedia. Two attorneys from Morrison & Foerster sort out the relevant copyright law.
A new legal analysis looks at the 1 July oral hearing of the European Court of Justice (CJEU) on Spain’s nullity actions against the regulations on the “unitary patent” and its language regime.
Significant progress has been made in the implementation of the European regulation to establish a European unitary patent and an international treaty which sets up a unified patent court. Given the loaded agenda for the coming year, it seems that a lot of work remains to be done. Meanwhile, an ongoing proceeding before the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) initiated by Spain could bring down the whole system, according to sources.
Unfertilised human eggs that can't develop into human beings are generally not “human embryos” within the meaning of the EU directive on the legal protection of biotechnological inventions, a 17 July European Court of Justice Advocate General opinion said. The opinion is good news for researchers into stem cell therapies, said a member of the industry group IP Federation, who added he hopes it will be upheld by the ECJ. But one biotech civil society member said the ruling, if it stands, could be abused.
The World Intellectual Property Organization is currently engaged in an unprecedented process for the selection of the new top management team to serve under recently re-elected Director General Francis Gurry. The open call for applicants resulted in some 360 applications from around the world, including from the upper echelons of WIPO itself, according to sources.
Over the last few months search engines around the world have been keeping an active eye on the developments of the landmark case ruled by the European Court of Justice (ECJ) requiring Google to consider individuals’ requests to remove links that they say infringe on their privacy.
While exceptions and limitations for librarians and archives are under negotiation at the World Intellectual Property Organization this week, librarians and archivists called on WIPO delegates to address an issue of contract licences for digital content, which they say often override such exceptions and limitations.
In a widely publicised case last month, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) applied the “right to be forgotten,” requesting that internet search engines, under certain circumstances, delist links to personal data upon request. The court’s decision establishes a contentious balance between the right to privacy and the public’s right to access to information. The ECJ left this balance to search engines to implement on a case-by-case basis. While some argue in favour of these decisions, others fear the larger worldwide implications that cases are leading to.
Internet start-up Aereo suffered a major defeat today, when the US Supreme Court ruled that the company was guilty of copyright infringement. But Aereo may not be the only loser. The ruling could jeopardise a wide variety of other online businesses, many experts warned.