Search results : 306

On 22 January 2015, the Court of Justice of the European Union delivered its judgment in Hejduk v. EnergieAgentur (Case C-441/13) on the question of whether an Austrian court may hear an action for online copyright infringement where the material is placed online in another Member State. The case concerned Pez Hejduk, a professional photographer of architecture, who had taken photographs of various buildings by an Austrian architect. A German company, EnergieAgentur, made the photographs available on its German website without Hejduk’s consent and Hejduk brought an action for copyright infringement...

In a decision of 26 June 2014 (case no. 2013/03/0012), the Österreichische Verwaltungsgerichtshof (Austrian Administrative Court – VwGH) submitted questions to the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) concerning the interpretation of Directive 2010/13/EU (Audiovisual Media Services Directive – AVMSD) as part of the “New Media Online” case (case C-347/14). The national court procedure concerns the website of an Austrian daily newspaper, which contains its own video section under a subdomain. This section contains a total of more than 300 news videos that can be searched via a catalogue....

In a decision of 23 January 2014, the Austrian Oberste Gerichtshof (Supreme Court - OGH) ruled that a website’s operators were obliged under Article 18(4) of the E-Commerce-Gesetz (E-Commerce Act - ECG) to disclose to the party concerned the e-mail addresses of users who had posted insulting comments about him. The court rejected the defence of editorial confidentiality. The defendant operates an online discussion forum on its Internet site. The plaintiff, a politician, had demanded that the forum operator disclose the e-mail addresses of four of its users who had written unlawful comments about...

On 27 March 2014, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) gave its ruling in Case C-314/12, a case between UPC Telekabel Wien, on the one hand, and Constantin Film Verleih and Wega Filmproduktionsgesellschaft, on the other. The CJEU considered whether it is permissible to order an internet service provider (ISP) to block its subscribers’ access to a website on which copyright protected films are made available to the public, without the rightsholders' consent. Constantin Film and Wega are film production companies. They claimed that some of the films in which they hold the copyright and...

In a decision of 17 December 2013, the Oberste Gerichtshof (Supreme Court - OGH) referred a legal dispute over the blank cassette levy on hard drives back to the first-instance court. It considered that the trial court had failed to establish whether and, if so, to what extent the remuneration system provided for in Article 42b(1) of the Urheberrechtsgesetz (Copyright Act - UrhG) - particularly in connection with the refunding of remuneration under Article 42b(6) UrhG - could be deemed “fair compensation” in the sense of Article 5(2)(b) of Copyright Directive 2001/29/EC. The OGH, particularly on...