Italy

[IT] The Court of Rome sentences Dailymotion and Veoh to refund Mediaset for copyright infringement

IRIS 2021-3:1/8

Francesco Di Giorgi & Luca Baccaro

On 21 January 2021, in the wake of the consolidated national and EU jurisprudence, the Civil Court of Rome adopted two important judgments aimed at protecting publishers from several forms of online piracy.

The first statement concerns the French portal Dailymotion (controlled by Vivendi), which was ordered to pay Mediaset over EUR 22 million because of the illegal publishing of approximately 15 000 videos, amounting to a total of 30 000 minutes of viewing, taken from Mediaset contents. In addition, it was sentenced to pay a penalty of EUR 1 000 per day for any further illegal dissemination of the passages subject to the judgment, and to publish the sentence in two of the main Italian national newspapers, Corriere della Sera and Sole 24 Ore. The ruling confirmed all the legal principles which had already been expressed in a previous ruling of July 2019 by the same Court of Rome regarding Dailymotion's liability.

On the same day, the Court of Rome also condemned the American platform Veoh (at the time of the facts managed by Qlipso Inc.) for the same violation, ordering it to pay Mediaset over EUR 3.3 million. Also in this case, a penalty of EUR 1 000 was imposed for each violation, in addition to the obligation to publish the sentence in the newspapers Corriere della Sera and Sole 24 Ore.