During this year’s Super Bowl, Katy Perry baffled and endeared millions with an act that included a giant metal tiger, a floating star, and the real stars of the show, two blue dancing sharks. Particularly, the star of the show was the left shark, which fumbled his dance moves and Read more
Some weeks ago I was asked to comment on whether tweets are subject to copyright protection. Unsurprisingly, this is a common question that gets asked over and over again, as some of the information online is contradictory and misleading, or refers to other jurisdictions. Do we have an answer in Read more
The UK has implemented yet another piece of positive copyright reform by creating a scheme that licences orphan works. Now, that is one sentence that you do not get to say often enough, but it truly is heartening that we are undergoing a very interesting evidence-based approach to IP regulation Read more
The popular press and the blogosphere are going ape over the news that Wikimedia has refused a take-down request by photographer David Slater of the self-portrait of a macaca monkey, arguing that it is in the public domain (I promise no more monkeying around with the puns). Wikimedia posted the Read more
The 1990s were a bit weird. France won the World Cup. 90210. “Under Construction” animated gifs. Marky Mark. The Rachel. We survived with our sanity intact. Barely. One thing that was weird as well was the obsession by copyright experts to determine the legality of hyper-linking, caching and framing; believe Read more
A new set of regulations detailing small yet important changes to its copyright law have come into effect in the UK through the publication of the The Copyright and Rights in Performances (Research, Education, Libraries and Archives) Regulations 2014. This is part of a series of reforms that will be Read more
Can you renounce to your copyright over a work? This simple question is the basis of a study undertaken by Yours Truly for WIPO. Most people I’ve asked the question tend to answer “of course!” It’s your work after all, and you can do anything you want with things you Read more
The European Court of Justice has produced a very interesting ruling with regards to injunctions ordering intermediaries to block websites which make available infringing content. This has been a hot legal topic in recent years due to the strategy used by various content owners when attempting to tackle copyright infringement; Read more
In a move that did not surprise Yours Truly, the unlicensed streaming service Popcorn Time was shut down by its developers a few days after it had gained notoriety. There was no reason why the site was removed, other than the developers needed to move on with their lives (after Read more
The Court of Justice of the European Union has reached a decision in the latest case dealing with questions about whether linking to content amounts to a communication to the public, and therefore unauthorised linking could be pursued as copyright infringement. The case is Svensson and Others v Retriever Sverige Read more