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Month: September 2019

IP court: making available is different from public performance

The Russian television channel (The First Channel) produces a television program famous in Russia. The program is called “What? Where? When?” where the experts answers the questions asked by the viewers. The program consists of certain amount of rounds. Between these rounds there is musical pause. In one episode of this program, during musical pause, the group of musicians has performed the song. The programs has been broadcasted and then uploaded to the web-site of the channel.

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Directive on television and radio programmes

What is the current situation for online transmission and retransmission of television and radio programmes?

Broadcasters are increasingly offering their broadcasts online (for instance through their simulcasting or catch-up services). However, such online programming often remains unavailable in other Member States, even if there is interest abroad to access it. The clearance of rights for such uses can be particularly burdensome: a broadcaster needs to obtain authorisations from various rightholders, for different categories of works and other protected content, and separately for every Member State, where the programme will be available online.

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SWD IA on the EU copyright modernization – impacts of baseline and first options for press publishers

Baseline option

Without intervention at EU level, legal uncertainty in this sector is expected to increase and publishers’ bargaining position would further weaken. The loss of print revenues is not expected to be compensated by the increase of online revenues. Online revenue streams feature smaller margins, as the competition for digital advertisement revenues is tough and free-access press items are widely available. Moreover, access to news through smartphones is increasing every year. As advertising revenues linked to access through smartphones are lower than through computers, this evolution of news consumption would make overall revenues decrease.

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Commission fined Nike €12.5 million for restricting cross-border sales of merchandising products

This spring the European Commission has fined Nike €12.5 million for banning traders from selling licensed merchandise to other countries within the EEA. This restriction concerned merchandising products of some of Europe’s best-known football clubs and federations, for which Nike held the licence.

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Commission fined Google €1.49 billion for abusive practices in online advertising

The European Commission has fined Google €1.49 billion for breaching EU antitrust rules this spring. Google has abused its market dominance by imposing a number of restrictive clauses in contracts with third-party websites which prevented Google’s rivals from placing their search adverts on these websites.

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Russian Facebook Vkontakte deploys anti-piracy filter

Russian social network Vkontakte has signed ant-piracy memorandum with book publishers and online stores. The aim of memo is similar to audio-visual memo signed by the Yandex & IT companies with audio-visual right holders (mostly Russian media companies making content for Russian TV). The memo supposed to anti-piracy checking of book content before the downloading.

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Commission fines Sanrio €6.2 million for restricting cross-border sales of merchandising products featuring Hello Kitty characters

The European Commission has fined Sanrio €6.2 million for banning traders from selling licensed merchandise to other countries within the EEA. This restriction concerned products featuring Hello Kitty or other characters owned by Sanrio.

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Survey shows Europeans are well aware of rules against unjustified geo-blocking

Seven months after new rules against unjustified geo-blocking began to apply, general consumer awareness of the new rules against restrictions for online shopping and cross-border sales is already high. A Eurobarometer survey shows that just a few months after the new rules on geo-blocking started to apply, 50% of EU citizens are generally aware of EU action to tackle unjustified discrimination by traders.

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