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On 16 June 2006, the Dutch Supreme Court rendered its decision in the Lancôme - Kecofa case. Lancôme had sued Kecofa for, amongst others, copyright infringement of its perfume “Trésor”. With this ruling, the Supreme Court has confirmed the finding of the Court of Appeal of 's-Hertogenbosch issued on 8 June 2004. In its judgment, the Supreme Court acknowledged that the scent of a perfume may qualify for protection under copyright law. However, this does require, as is always the case for protection under copyright law, that the scent be original. It added it is the scent itself which is protected...

Dutch public broadcasting organisations VARA and TROS have both received official warnings from the Commissariaat voor de Media (Media Authority). The consumer programmes of these two networks were found to have cooperated with providers of Internet sites that offer a scheme to compare different insurance policies enabling consumers to make an informed choice. In doing so, they were in breach of the Media Act which prohibits public broadcasting organisations to serve the profit-making activities of third parties. The Internet site of VARA’s consumer programme Kassa provided consumers with information...

The District Court of Amsterdam recently ruled that official reports, based on transcriptions of recorded conversations between a victim of extortion (Dutch real estate tycoon, Willem Endstra) and an intelligence agent, are not protected by copyright. In the period of May 2003 to January 2004, Endstra had fifteen conversations with agents of the Criminele Inlichtingen Eenheid (Criminal Intelligence Unit- CIE). In these conversations, which were being recorded as they took place, the businessman indicated that he was being extorted by Willem Holleeder. Endstra was murdered in May 2004. The recordings...

The Dutch public broadcasting organisation BNN will launch a digital channel in September 2006. The channel, temporarily called The CoolCast Project, will broadcast twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, via decoders and the Internet. The channel is aimed at young viewers in the age category of thirteen to thirty-four years. The board of directors of the public broadcasting organisations considers thematic channels to be an important step towards the digital future of television. In particular, it allows broadcasting organisations to reach young people. According to BNN, this is one of the...

The Delft University of Technology has launched a new peer-to-peer system, based on open-source software, which can be used to distribute television programmes through the internet. Public broadcasting organisations, as well as commercial television stations and cable and telecommunications companies, have shown keen interest in this programme called Tribler. Tribler was developed by a group of scientists in a project supported by the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs. The software allows users to download television programmes from the broadcasting organisation’s server, and then to distribute...