All hands on deck as creative industries and search engines tackle online piracy (Brands & IP Newsnotes - issue 5)
23 June 2017
The UK Government, through the UKIPO, Ofcom and DMCS, has helped broker an agreement between Google, Bing, the BPI and Motion Picture Association over a new voluntary code of practice.
Copyright owners will certainly be buoyed by this new agreement, which should be a real help in combatting online infringement. This new agreement also comes hot on the heels of a few recent EU Court of Justice cases. The first of which was GS Media, in which the court effectively created a take-down procedure when it decided that linking to unauthorised content online constitutes a “communication to the public” and therefore infringes copyright. Another is the Pirate Bay case, where the Attorney General (at the time of writing the Court has not handed down a decision) considered that the indexing of infringing content without actually sharing the materials themselves is also a “communication to the public”.
While the text of the code does not appear to have been published yet, the BPI has explained that it “will accelerate the demotion of illegal sites following notices from rights holders, and establishes ongoing technical consultation, increased co-operation and information sharing to develop and improve on the process. It will also enable new practices to be adopted where needed.”
Related items
Playing with fire: user-generated content on Twitter (Brands & IP Newsnotes - issue 5)
23 June 2017The strange world of Twitter, where brands engage with their customers at their peril. The main lesson learned from the recent #WalkersWave Twitter promotion is one that brands have heard before: the British public love nothing more than a piss-take.
Public goes nutellay crazy for AI design (Brands & IP Newsnotes - issue 5)
23 June 2017Nutella hit the headlines in February this year after using an algorithm to produce millions of unique labels in Italy. The jars flew off the shelves with customers keen to get their hands on a one-of-a kind jar. Each label design was completely unique with only the Nutella logo remaining the same.
Get me a #covfefe (Brands & IP Newsnotes - issue 5)
23 June 2017In case you missed it, the 45th President of the United States recently took his habit of late night tweeting to a new low. Presumably meaning to rail against the ‘mainstream media’ coverage, Trump instead complained of “negative press covfefe” and trailed off mid-sentence. Cue ridicule and the hashtag #covfefe trending on Twitter.
To UPC or not UPC – implementation of Unified Patent Court delayed (Brands & IP Newsnotes - issue 5)
23 June 2017The Unified Patent Court (UPC) is intended to provide a regional forum resolve patent disputes. At the moment, parties have to litigate patent disputes on a country by country basis across Europe, which is time-consuming, expensive and can lead to differing decisions in some countries. UPC decisions will have effect in all 25 states participating in the UPC, providing a single forum to resolve these disputes.
Champagne supernova: Cristal brand owner sues cava producer (Brands & IP Newsnotes - issue 5)
23 June 2017Do you know your Champagne from your Cava? Quite possibly, but a High Court judge held in late 2015 that a Spanish cava producer trading under the brand name, “Cristalino” had used a confusingly similar sign to that of the famous tipple preferred by rappers and the like, “Cristal”.
Clash of the Titans: Google v Uber (Brands & IP Newsnotes - issue 5)
23 June 2017In February, Waymo, part of Google’s parent company, sued Uber for theft of confidential information. Allegedly, a former employee of Waymo, who had been a key part of Google’s driverless car initiative, took 14,000 files and then shortly jumped ship to start up his own autonomous vehicle company. A short time later, Uber acquired the start-up for $680 million.
All hands on deck as creative industries and search engines tackle online piracy (Brands & IP Newsnotes - issue 5)
23 June 2017The UK Government, through the UKIPO, Ofcom and DMCS, has helped broker an agreement between Google, Bing, the BPI and Motion Picture Association over a new voluntary code of practice.