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The Dutch commercial broadcasting station Veronica has lost its chosen name ME in a dispute over trademark infringement. Ruling in summary proceedings, the District Court of Utrecht held that ME is confusingly similar to WE, the well-known trademark of a chain of clothing stores. The station, owned by RTL/Holland Media Groep (RTL/HMG), will be obliged to drop its current name, Veronica, on 1 September 2001, following the withdrawal from RTL/HMG in May 2000 of the Veronica broadcasting association, which owns the Veronica trademark. After losing ME to WE, the former Veronica has decided to take...

In a judgment of 17 November 2000, the Hasselt Criminal Court convicted a person who was found in possession of pictures and software containing images of sexual behaviour of a pornographic character featuring minors aged under 16. He was convicted under Article 383bis of the Criminal Code. Two Internet Service Providers (ISPs) whose infrastructure and services had been used to distribute and receive the illegal content on the Internet were not convicted. The Court referred to the basic rules of the Belgian Collaboration Protocol to Help Stamp Out Illegal Acts on the Internet (see IRIS 1999-7:...

By means of an amendment to the Burgerlijk Wetboek (Civil Code), Directive 97/55/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 6 October 1997 amending Directive 84/450/EEC concerning misleading advertising so as to include comparative advertising was transposed into Dutch law. The Directive states that comparative advertising is, in principle, admissible in the European Community, provided a number of carefully defined criteria are met. In order to transpose the Directive, an new Article 194a was added to the Dutch Civil Code, defining comparative advertising and explaining under what conditions...

The Court of Appeal of the Hague has ruled that an on-line database set up by an organisation of real estate brokers and containing information on real estate property that is for sale, is not protected by the Databankenwet (Database Act). The Databankenwet, an implementation of the European Database Directive, requires a "substantial investment" to be made by the owner of the database. Considering that the database was created for the organisation's internal purposes prior to on-line publication, the Court judged that there had not been a substantial investment by the organisation. Therefore,...

A number of decisions on access for broadcasters to cable infrastructures have been taken recently in the Netherlands. The Onafhankelijke Post en Telecommunicatie Autoriteit (Independent Post and Telecommunications Authority - OPTA) has repeatedly decided that cable network operators should not be allowed simply to refuse cable access for certain channels. The case between broadcaster MCM and regional cable network operator CasTel concerned the latter's transmission and fees policies. MCM asked CasTel to carry its Muzzik channel. At the same time, MCM demanded that, if CasTel agreed to this request,...