E-prescribing in the Czech Republic: 1450 pharmacies, but no doctors, register for central prescriptions database
Andrea Jarolmkov and Vojtěch Chloupek, Prague
Electronic prescribing of medicines, also known as "e-prescribing", is a key part of the eHealth concept currently being adopted in the Czech Republic. Although the relevant legal regulation concerning e-prescribing was put in place at the end of 2007, due to data protection issues and current lack of take-up by doctors the project is unlikely to be finished until 2010.
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France |
French Supreme Court decision in website scraping case confirms narrow scope of database rights
Sandrine Rambaud, Paris
The French Supreme Court has dismissed a claim that an aggregation service that extracted real estate advertisements from websites infringed database right. This illustrates the narrow scope of database rights after the 2004 decision of the European Court of Justice in BHB v William Hill.
Paris Court of Appeal holds that Dailymotion is a host and did not have knowledge of infringing material
Anne-Sophie Lampe, Paris
The Paris Court of Appeal has held, overruling a previous First Instance Court decision, that the Dailymotion video sharing website was not liable for copyright infringement since it had not received adequate notification that content posted to its website by users was unlawful.
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Germany |
German Court decides split of music online copyrights is invalid
Fabian Niemann, Frankfurt
The Regional Court of Munich has decided that the music industry's common practice of splitting online rights into the mechanical reproduction right and the right to make publicly available and to subsequently claim licence fees for both rights separately, conflicts with German copyright law. The court held that, in order to fulfil the legislative purpose of avoiding multiple claims and ensuring legal certainty of licences, such splitting of one uniform economical-technical process into two separate exploitation rights is not possible.
Hamburg Court rules on copyright liability of RapidShare
Fabian Niemann, Frankfurt
In its judgment of 12 June 2009 the Regional Court of Hamburg granted an injunction (cease and desist order) in preliminary proceedings in favour of the German music collecting society GEMA against the Swiss filehoster RapidShare AG. The decision was based on the finding that although RapidShare used an MD5 hash filtering program, it had not done sufficient to prevent its users from illegally uploading music to its servers and thereby making the music publicly available. Contrary to many press reports, the court did not impose a fine or damages on RapidShare.
Software publishers can prevent resale of bare licences and back-up copies of used software
Jrg-Alexander Paul, Frankfurt
Three German Courts of Appeal have held that the distribution of used software is only permitted if the copyright holder consents or if the software is distributed in the same physical form (i.e. on the media) on which it was initially put on the market.
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The Netherlands |
New standard terms and conditions for the Dutch ICT industry
Huub de Jong and Frank Simons, The Hague
In January 2009 ICT~Office, the Dutch trade association of ICT-companies, published an updated set of standard conditions which modernise the widely known FENIT-conditions.
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Sweden |
First Swedish information orders case overturned on appeal
Henrik Nilsson, Stockholm
Following the Swedish implementation in April of the Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement Directive, the Solna District Court issued Sweden's first order requiring an ISP to disclose the identity of the user behind an IP address alleged to have been used for activities infringing copyright. However, this decision has now been overturned by the Svea Court of Appeals.
Sweden implements the IP Rights Enforcement Directive for Copyright
Henrik Nilsson, Stockholm
A new Swedish regulation concerning copyright enforcement came into force on 1 April 2009. The regulation was introduced in order to complete the implementation of the EU Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement Directive.
The Swedish tax consequences of e-commerce
Hampus kerstedt and Henrik Nilsson, Stockholm
In this feature we survey the tax consequences of e-commerce and the virtual economy in Sweden.
Swedish tax authorities cash in on the virtual economy
Hampus kerstedt and Henrik Nilsson, Stockholm
The Swedish tax authority "Skatteverket" is coming to the end of a three-year tax investigation project into the E-Commerce Sector. The E-Commerce project is proclaimed as a great success so far. Skatteverket has to date issued formal decisions finding an additional SEK 670 million (€63.4 million/£55 million) in undeclared income as a result of its cyberspace tax audits.
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UK |
Google not liable for defamatory comments in search snippets
Graham Smith and Brooke Whitaker, London
Google has been found not liable for defamatory comments in its automatically generated search results. The English High Court held that Google was merely a facilitator, and had not published the search result snippets.
First UK decision on negligence liability for incorrect information on website
Chris Stone, London
The English Court of Appeal has held, by a 2-1 majority, that a trade association was not liable to a user of its website who suffered financial loss through relying on incorrect information on the website. The majority would have found the trade association liable, had the website not invited the user to request a further information pack from which the error on the website would have been apparent. This was held to amount to an opportunity for the user to make an independent inquiry, and that a user could not be expected to rely on the information on the website alone without making such an inquiry. Accordingly, it was held by the majority that the trade association did not owe a duty of care to the claimants.
P2P file sharing legislation – latest UK developments
Taliah Davis, London
The UK Government consultation on proposed peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing legislation, issued following the Digital Britain report, has been controversially amended to include the possibility of suspending internet access for repeat infringement.
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