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Copyright protection does not apply when clothing design produces a specific aesthetic effect. That was the decision reached by the European Court of Justice on 12 September 2019 in respect of a dispute between two Portuguese companies (Judgment ECLI:EU:C:2019:721). The case involved two companies that design, produce and commercialise clothing: G-Star Raw CV and Cofemel - Sociedade de Vestuário SA. Cofemel is a dominant company in the textile sector in Portugal and had been accused by G-Star Raw CV of copying the design and model of its jeans, sweaters and T-shirts. In other words, G-Star Raw...

On 26 November 2018, the EU Commission initiated proceedings for infringement of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union against 17 member states for non-compliance with the Directive requiring the transposition into national law of the Marrakesh Treaty (Directive (EU) 2017/1564) (see IRIS 2017-9/4 and IRIS 2016-9/4). The Marrakesh Treaty is a WIPO-administered convention that was signed on 27 June 2013 and entered into force on 30 September 2016, after the first 20 ratifications. The Treaty facilitates access to print works in formats adapted for persons who are blind, visually impaired...

Portuguese homes in which children grow up are increasingly digital. This is one of the main conclusions of the study released in February 2017 by the state media regulatory body, ERC (“Entidade Reguladora para a Comunicação Social”), entitled “Growing up between screens: Use of electronic devices by children (3-8 years)”. The study was focused on the use of electronic media by children aged three to eight years old and sought to identify the environments of screens, in which children live (namely television, computers, consoles, mobile phones, tablets), their modes of access and uses, as well...

In a judgment of 22 March 2016 the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) found that Portugal has violated a journalist’s right to report about the hearing in a criminal case. The ECtHR emphasised that the domestic court hearing was public and that the criminal conviction of the journalist for having broadcast unauthorised recordings of the statements of witnesses during the hearing was not necessary in a democratic society. Therefore the journalist’s conviction amounted to a breach of Article 10 of the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR). The applicant in this case was Sofia Pinto Coelho,...

In finding that there had been no violation of the right to privacy and the right to reputation, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) upheld a high level of freedom of expression in a case concerning a joke in a TV-programme about the sexual orientation of a television celebrity in Portugal. For the ECtHR it was important that the domestic courts, in dismissing the defamation complaint by Mr Sousa Goucha, took into account the context in which the joke had been made, and referred to the playful and irreverent style of the television comedy show and its usual humour. It also noted that Mr...