Svensson: Has The CJEU Saved The Internet?

On 13 February 2014, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) delivered its judgment in Nils Svensson and Others v Retriever Sverige AB, Case C-466/12, a landmark decision about the operation of copyright on the Internet. The CJEU ruled that the owner of a website may use 'hyperlinks' to redirect Internet users to protected works available on other websites without the authorisation of the copyright holder of the linked website, provided that the linked website is 'freely accessible', i.e. can be accessed by anyone using the Internet.

Background

Retriever Sverige operates a website providing a list of clickable links to articles published by other websites. The claimants were journalists who wrote articles for the Göteborgs-Posten news website and whose articles were being linked by the Retriever Sverige website. The claimants argued that Retriever Sverige's hyperlinks constituted an infringement of the claimants' copyright by making a communication to