Share on LinkedInShare on LinkedIn

ARTICLE · 12 OCTOBER 2016

Copyright: Europe Explores Its Boundaries - October 2016

Morrison Foerster
Morrison Foerster
Contributor
Morrison Foerster

Morrison Foerster

With approximately 1,000 lawyers in 19 offices, Morrison & Foerster is a preeminent global law firm...

View firm profile
Explore more from Morrison Foerster

A recent copyright ruling of the highest European Union court may prove to be a double-edged sword for entities that offer their customers free Wi-Fi.

European UnionIntellectual Property
Mercedes Samavi
Mercedes Samavi
Susan McLean
Susan McLean
Author LinkedIn connections

Free Wi-Fi may come with more strings attached than anyone previously thought – at least in Europe. A recent copyright ruling of the highest European Union court may prove to be a double-edged sword for entities that offer their customers free Wi-Fi. And it shows, once again, that modernization of copyright law to suit the digital age is a key area of focus for the EU.

The question before the Court of Justice of the European Union (the CJEU) was whether a retailer (in this case, an electrical store – although the practice is common among cafes, restaurants, and coffee shops) providing its customers with free use of an unprotected Wi-Fi network can be held liable for IP infringements by a third party. The question was raised on referral from the German courts, which have looked at similar issues before and ruled that operators of Wi-Fi access points are not liable for rights infringements by users. But the CJEU went further and provided guidance that may reassure and

We operate a free-to-view policy, asking only that you register in order to read all of our content. Please login or register to view the rest of this article.

Register for freeORLog in

Related Articles

Legal Intelligence Newsletters: sign up for the latest legal and regulatory news on your chosen topics

Read more about

Related Comparative Guides

See more popular content from

Article

UMG v. DistroKid: When AI Becomes A Consumer Protection Issue

Universal Music Group's lawsuit against DistroKid raises a critical question about AI disclosure in consumer markets: when does the use of artificial intelligence become material information that must be disclosed to consumers? The case centers on allegations that DistroKid distributed mass-generated AI music while creating the impression it was created by legitimate human artists, potentially violating existing consumer protection laws even without specific AI disclosure requirements.
United StatesIntellectual Property
Frankfurt Kurnit Klein & Selz PC
Frankfurt Kurnit Klein & Selz PC
Article

U.S. Government Backs Fair Use For AI Training In OpenAI Copyright Litigation

The U.S. government has filed a Statement of Interest of the United States of America under 28 U.S.C. § 517 in the Southern District of New York multidistrict litigation over OpenAI’s use of copyrighted works to train large language models. The filing appears to be the federal government’s first direct intervention in the wave of artificial intelligence (AI) training copyright cases, and it advises the court to treat model training (separate from use of AI to generate outputs) on copyrighted text standing alone as a highly transformative fair use under current law.
United StatesIntellectual Property
Lowenstein Sandler LLP
Lowenstein Sandler LLP
Article

The Ninth Circuit Affirms Dismissal Of DMCA CMI Removal Claim Against AI Code Generator – Output Is A New Work Not A Copy Of Training Data

There was a significant ruling in the Doe v. Github case involving training of AI code generator models on open source. The United States Court of Appeals for The Ninth Circuit affirmed the district court ruling dismissing part of an action brought under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (“DMCA”) by programmers against GitHub, Inc., and other defendants. The issues centered on whether defendants removed copyright management information (CMI) from content used to train the AI code generator models.
United StatesIntellectual Property
Sheppard
Sheppard
Article

Is This Real? Navigating AI Impersonation Under New And Existing Laws

Is this AI-generated, or is it real? As generative AI tools have become increasingly capable of creating realistic images, videos, and audio, they have also made it easier to impersonate real people without their consent. In response, states are increasingly adopting laws that impose civil and criminal liability for certain AI-generated content that replicates an individual’s identity, likeness, voice, or other personal attributes.
United StatesIntellectual Property
Wiley Rein
Wiley Rein
Article

The Trademark Scam Field Guide: Look-Alike Filing Sites, Fake USPTO Notices, And How To Get Out If You’ve Been Caught

A business decides to file a trademark. Someone on the team searches for a familiar online legal-services brand, clicks the first result, and lands on a site with a similar-sounding name, a polished design, five-star reviews, and a low flat fee. The application gets filed. Months later the business learns the “service” was not who they thought it was, the filing was signed by someone with no authority to sign it, and the USPTO has suspended the application along with hundreds or thousands of others from the same shop.
United StatesIntellectual Property
Harness IP
Harness IP
Article

AI Learning Or AI Copying? Ninth Circuit Weighs In

The Ninth Circuit held that GitHub Copilot's AI-generated code did not violate DMCA's copyright management information (CMI) removal provisions, even when output resembled source code, because the system generated new works through probabilistic patterns rather than retrieving and stripping information from existing copies. This decision establishes a critical distinction between AI systems that learn and generate versus those that retrieve and reproduce, with significant implications for how courts evaluat
United StatesIntellectual Property
Ballard Spahr LLP
Ballard Spahr LLP
Article

New Law Ushers In Sweeping Changes To Bankruptcy Regime In China

The new Enterprise Bankruptcy Law of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) (Bankruptcy Law) was adopted on August 27, 2006 and will take effect on June 1, 2007, superseding the 1986-enacted Enterprise Bankruptcy Law (Trial) 1986, governing the bankruptcy of State-owned Enterprises . The Bankruptcy Law offers for the first time a unified regime applicable to all types of enterprises in China and also provides a more robust and detailed regime for enforcement of creditors’ claims. We discuss below
ChinaInsolvency/Bankruptcy/Re-Structuring
Morrison Foerster
Morrison Foerster