The European Commission has accepted a request from Austria, France, Iceland, Italy, Norway, Spain and Sweden to assess under the EU Merger Regulation the proposed acquisition of Shazam by Apple. The Commission considers the transaction may threaten to adversely affect competition in the EEA.
Category: EU
According to Article 15(1) of the e-Commerce Directive, Member States are prohibited from imposing a general monitoring obligation on online intermediaries within the meaning of Articles 12-14 of that Directive. Such an obligation would also be incompatible with the general requirements of fairness, proportionality and any measures not being excessively costly set out in Article 3 of IPRED.
Comments closedOption 2 would enhance the level of legal certainty for the benefit of a wide range of retransmission services – IPTV, OTT, satellite, DTT, mobile – and can be expected to both (i) contribute to a greater variety of such services and (ii) provide an incentive to the retransmission service providers to expand the range of TV / radio channels offered to their subscribers.
Comments closedIn the light of coming copyright reforms in EU the draft impact assessment concerns some important copyright issues. One of them is two rights for a single transmission.
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The European Commission decided to refer Poland to the Court of Justice of the EU for failure to notify complete transposition (partial non-transposition) of EU rules on collective management of copyright and related rights, and multi-territorial licensing of rights in musical works for online use (Directive 2014/26/EU) into national law. The Commission called on the Court to impose financial penalty to Poland – € 87 612.00 per day. Member States had to transpose the Directive into national law by 10 April 2016.
Comments closedIPRED refers in its Articles 9(1)(a) and 11 to the possibility of issuing injunctions against ‘any intermediary whose services are used by a third party to infringe IPRs’. The Directive does not specify which economic operators are to be considered as intermediaries for the purpose of the Directive.
Comments closedOption 1 – Mandatory collective management of rights to retransmission of TV / radio broadcasts by means of IPTV and other retransmission services provided over “closed” electronic communications networks
Option 1 would enhance the level of legal certainty for the benefit of a specific category of retransmission services – those provided over “closed” electronic communications networks – and can be expected to contribute to a better offer of such services, depending on market situations in particular MS.
Comments closedThis directive should make the life and welfare of certain creative persons better. The Member States had to bring their national legislation in accordance with provisions of this directive. Intellectual property office of United Kingdom has organised consultation on the implementation of Directive 2011/77/EU Amending Directive 2006/116/EC. In this consultation paper the very interesting things can be found.
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