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The European Commission has ordered the Dutch authorities to recover EUR 76,3 million plus interest from NOS, the umbrella organization of public broadcasters in the Netherlands. An investigation under EC Treaty state aid rules into ad hoc payments to the public broadcasters between 1994 and 2005 showed that the payments exceeded the financial needs of public broadcasters for public service purposes. The Dutch public broadcasting system consists of 19 public service broadcasters. NOS is both a broadcaster and the coordination and management organization of the individual public service broadcasters....

The Court of Appeal of Amsterdam has decided that Techno Design’s exploitation of the mp3 search engine zoekmp3.nl is unlawful with regard to copyright owners and owners of neighbouring rights. This is the outcome of the appeal Stichting BREIN (BREIN Foundation- an entity representing copyright owners) filed a case against a previous judgment of the District Court. Zoekmp3.nlfacilitates the search for mp3 music files on the World Wide Web. It provides Internet users with a hyperlink or deeplink to the server of the user whose computer contains the requested file. By clicking on the link, the file...

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...