"However, the substantial progress made with Europeana also brings to the surface the challenges and problems linked to the digitisation process. At the moment, Europeana includes mainly digitised books which are in the public domain and are thus no longer protected by copyright law (which extends to 70 years after the death of the author).
For the moment, Europeana includes, for legal reasons, neither out-of print works (some 90% of the books in Europe's national libraries), nor orphan works (estimated at 10 – 20% of in-copyright collections) which are still in copyright but where the author cannot be identified.
Europeana also shows that licensing of copyright-protected material in Europe still takes place under a very fragmented legal framework. Earlier this year a French aggregator had to withdraw photographs from Europeana, since it only had the right to disseminate the material on French territory".
From THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF PATENT POLICY REFORM IN THE UNITED STATES: "For the federal antitrust agencies, the extension of patent monopolies in time through profuse improvement patenting and their extension in scope through restrictive cross-licensing agreements pose important enforcement problems. Here too, the problem is in part one of education. Those who manage the antitrust agencies need to learn that there are important barriers to rapid imitation, enhancing incentives for innovation, other than the patent system, so maximization of monopoly rewards associated with patent holdings is unlikely to maximize economic welfare. These agencies need to learn that extension of patent monopolies over time and in scope is more likely to suppress than stimulate innovation. and insisting that drug production be opened up for generic competition once basic patents have expired, leaving however the right to produce validly patented improvement molecules exclusively in the hands of the original drug developer (or any other firm that patents and tests improved variants)"
From C-5/08, Infopaq International A/S v Danske Dagblades Forening, 16 July 2009: " In the light of the foregoing, the Court finds that an act can be held to be ‘transient’ within the meaning of the second condition laid down in Article 5(1) of Directive 2001/29 only if its duration is limited to what is necessary for the proper completion of the technological process in question, it being understood that that process must be automated so that it deletes that act automatically, without human intervention, once its function of enabling the completion of such a process has come to an end".
From John Vickers, Competition Policy and Property Rights, p.23 "The European Microsoft judgment has therefore left unclear when a dominant firm with IP rights must share them with rivals. Following the judgment, the answer in Europe appears to be: by no means as exceptionally as previously thought. In some ways it is regrettable that Microsoft did not appeal to the European Court of Justice, which might usefully have clarified if not tightened the law".
From a speech he held at the Canada's Digital Economy Conference, "...we need to provide business confidence with rules that provide sufficient flexibility to innovate. We need rules that give consumers confidence that they won’t lose access to their online purchases whenever an online seller drops support for a particular business line. Rules that assure consumers that it’s ok to use their PVR or to shift music to their iPod. Rules that encourage rather than discourage research into encryption and digital security, distance learning opportunities, access to knowledge and long overdue digitization initiatives. We can achieve this kind of reform and still implement international treaties such as the WIPO Internet treaties".
Rainer Lindberg from the Finnish Competition Authority argues that competition is not an enemy but a precious ally for the current macroeconomic stimulus tools.
From the judgement, C-429/07, Inspecteur van de Belastingdienst v X BV, 11.06.2009. "(...) a literal interpretation of the first subparagraph of Article 15(3) of Regulation No 1/2003 leads to the conclusion that the option for the Commission, acting on its own initiative, to submit written observations to courts of the Member States is subject to the sole condition that the coherent application of Articles 81 EC or 82 EC so requires. That condition may be fulfilled even if the proceedings concerned do not pertain to issues relating to the application of Article 81 or Article 82 of the Treaty" ... In proceedings relating to the penalties in respect of anti‑competitive practices provided for in Article 83(2)(a) EC, the decision that the court seised must give is capable of impairing the effectiveness of those penalties and therefore might compromise the coherent application of Articles 81 EC or 82 EC. In the circumstances of the action in the main proceedings, it is quite clear that the outcome of the dispute relating to the tax deductibility of part of a fine imposed by the Commission is capable of impairing the effectiveness of the penalty imposed by the Community competition authority. The effectiveness of the Commission’s decision by which it imposed a fine on a company might be significantly reduced if the company concerned, or at least a company linked to that company, were allowed to deduct fully or in part the amount of that fine from the amount of its taxable profits, since such a possibility would have the effect of offsetting the burden of that fine with a reduction of the tax burden. It follows from all of the foregoing that the third sentence of the first subparagraph of Article 15(3) of Regulation No 1/2003 must be interpreted as meaning that it permits the Commission to submit on its own initiative written observations to a national court of a Member State in proceedings relating to the deductibility from taxable profits of the amount of a fine or a part thereof imposed by the Commission for infringement of Articles 81 EC or 82 EC".
Description of the Google-Michigan amended terms released by the Library Association (ALA), the Association of Research Libraries (ARL), and the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL)
Microsoft's has announced the (apparent?) separation of Internet Explorer (IE) from Windows. According to the Commission, other solutions would have been more suitable, such as allowing "consumers to choose from different web browsers presented to them through a 'ballot screen' in Windows"
Socalled "Guidelines" (Linee guida sulla gestione dei diritti d'autore nelle università) by the AIDRO (Associazione Italiana per I Diritti di Riproduzione delle Opere dell'ingegno - a Reproduction Rights Organisation - RRO). Comments can be sent to segreteria@aidro.org, but it is still unclear whether they will be published on the AIDRO's website.
LG Frankfurt am Main, 2-06 O 172/09 (verkündet am 13.05.2009). Lesenswertes aus der Begründung (meine Hervorhebungen): "Vorstellbare tatsächlich effektive Kontrollen, die zuvor eine detaillierte Darlegung und Prüfung des Zwecks der Nutzung voraussetzen würden, erweisen sich erkennbar als unverhältnismäßig und stehen der Intention der Regelung des § 52b UrhG entgegen. Die intendierte Nutzungspraxis würde auf diesem Wege vollständig ausgehöhlt". "Nach Auffassung der Kammer wird die Anwendung des § 52b UrhG nicht bereits durch das Vorliegen eines Vertragsangebots ausgeschlossen, wie dies die Antragstellerin meint" "Die Kammer verkennt nicht, dass durch die vorstehende Auslegung den öffentlichen Bibliotheken eine sehr komfortabel ausgestaltete Verhandlungsposition im Rahmen von Verhandlungen mit Verlagen zugesprochen wird. Dies gebietet jedoch kein abweichendes Auslegungsergebnis, insbesondere liegt kein Verstoß gegen den sog. Drei-Stufen-Test vor. Der Verlag wird nicht unangemessen benachteiligt, insbesondere sind auch die öffentlichen Bibliotheken im vorliegenden Fall gehalten, eine entsprechende Vergütung für die gesetzliche Lizenz zu erstatten. Diese wird über die VG-Wort ausgehandelt und abgerechnet. Auch stellt sich der hier in Streit stehende Eingriff im Verhältnis zu den bereits seit Jahrzehnten geltenden Eingriffen gemäß § 53 Abs. 2 UrhG nicht als wesentlich intensiver dar. Insbesondere die von Antragstellerseite aufgeführten Umsatzeinbußen und Beeinträchtigungen des Verlagsangebots liegen nicht nahe und waren bereits Gegenstand intensiver Diskussionen, welche das Gesetzgebungsverfahren begleitet haben" "Auch die beanstandete Digitalisierung der Werke ist von § 52b UrhG gedeckt. Nach überwiegender Auffassung in der Literatur begründet § 52b UrhG eine Annex- Berechtigung zur Vervielfältigung des Werkes. Um die Zugänglichmachung zu ermöglichen, müssen die privilegierten Einrichtungen in aller Regel zunächst jedoch ein dazu erforderliches digitales Vervielfältigungsstück herstellen. Ansonsten liefe die fragliche Bestimmung weitgehend leer". "Die Antragstellerin kann von der Antragsgegnerin gem. § 97 I UrhG verlangen, es Nutzern nicht zu ermöglichen, digitale Versionen der Werke, die im Verlag der Antragstellerin veröffentlicht sind, an elektronischen Arbeitsplätzen auf USB-Sticks oder andere Träger für digitalisierte Werke zu vervielfältigen bzw. diese Vervielfältigungen aus den Räumen der Bibliothek mitzunehmen. Dagegen war das gegen die Möglichkeit eines Ausdrucks der digitalisierten Werke gerichtete Unterlassungsbegehren zurückzuweisen". "Nach dem Willen des Gesetzgebers soll der geschaffene § 52b UrhG eine Nutzung ermöglichen, die der analogen Nutzung vergleichbar ist (BT-DS 16/1828, S. 26). Da das Angebot hier im Wesentlichen auf wissenschaftliche Arbeit mit Texten gerichtet ist, umfasst dies auch die Möglichkeit eines Ausdrucks. Eine sinnvolle Arbeit mit längeren Texten setzt regelmäßig die Möglichkeit voraus, in etwaigen Kopien zentrale Passagen des Textes zu markieren und diese in Auszügen auch aus der Bibliothek zum weitergehenden Studium an anderen Ort mitzunehmen. Ließe das Gesetz eine derartige Möglichkeit nicht zu, wäre das geschaffene Angebot einem analogen Angebot nicht vergleichbar, sondern beschränkte sich wohl für die überwiegende Anzahl der wissenschaftlichen Nutzer im Wesentlichen auf die Möglichkeit einer Überprüfung von Zitaten....Das Gesetz rechtfertigt in jedem Falle keine vollständige Kopie des Werkes, sondern lediglich eine teilweise Ablichtung einzelner Passagen. Vor diesem Hintergrund erweisen sich die besorgten Unterschiede nicht als derart intensiv. Sie sind vielmehr Folge und auch Zweck der geschaffenen Neuregelung, welche einer Förderung der Medienkompetenz der Bevölkerung dienen soll....Nach dem eindeutigen Wortlaut des § 52b UrhG muss sich das Angebot auf eine Nutzung in den Räumen der Bibliothek beschränken. Ließe man die Speicherung und Mitnahme der Digitalisate selbst zu, würde – anders als bei der Mitnahme eines Ausdrucks – eine Nutzung des geschaffenen Angebots auch außerhalb der Räumlichkeiten der Bibliothek ermöglicht. Dies ist durch die geschaffene Regelung nicht mehr gedeckt".
Judgment on "single meeting" and the presumption of a causal connection between the concerted practice and the market conduct of the participating undertakings. See the Court's press release and the actual ruling.
Das Aktionsbündnis hält die jüngste Änderung des Wahrnehmungsvertrags der VG Wort für eine Gefährdung der Interessen von Bildung und Wissenschaft an einem in Sinne von Open Access freizügigen Zugriff zur wissenschaftlichen Literatur. Allen Wissenschaftlerinnen und Wissenschaftlern wird daher empfohlen , jene Änderung nicht zuzustimmen bzw. ihr zu widersprechen. "Wahrnehmungsberechtigte" haben nämlich die Möglichkeit, den Änderungen binnen einer Frist von sechs Wochen zu widersprechen; "Bezugsberechtigte" müssen sich mit den Änderungen einverstanden erklären. Bemerkenswert ist auch die dabei angekündigte Absicht des Aktionsbündnisses, zu versuchen, "mit Google zu einer Einigung zu kommen, nach der die freie Anzeige in Google Books erlaubt wird, eventuell auch mit Werbung, aber nur unter der Voraussetzung, dass dadurch keine neuen kommerziellen Verwertungsmodelle entstehen"
Microsoft's practices (refusal to deal and price discrimination as possible abuses of dominant position) formally under scrutiny in Russia (s. also the original version of the press release).
Par sa Décision n° 09-SOA-01 du 18 mai 2009 la nouvelle Autorité de la concurrence se saisit d'office pour avis, afin d’examiner des questions rélatives à la concurrence dans le secteur des transports publics terrestres de voyageurs.
VG Wort nach der Änderungen ihres Wahrnehmungsvertrags: - zieht die Vergütungsansprüche für die bis zum 5. Mai 2009 von Google digitalisierten Werke ein; - zieht aber die in Deutschland erschienenen Werke aus dem Digitalisierungsprogramm von Google zurück; - kann digitale Nutzungen von vergriffenen Werken lizenzieren, wenn die Rechteinhaber damit einverstanden sind (Google aber auch Träger von deutschen und europäischen Digitalisierungsprojekten kämen als Lizenznehmer in Betracht); - kann digitale Vervielfältigungen zum ausschließlichen Zweck der Anzeige von bibliographischen Daten im Internet lizenzieren.
According to the Commission, competition and innovation have been undermined on the x86 CPU market. In particular, Intel allegedly gave secret loyalty or fidelity rebates to spur the sale of its x86 central processing units (CPUs). Moreover Intel, according to the EU Commission's findings, made direct payments to computer manufacturers on the condition that they halted or delayed the launch of products containing competitors’ x86 CPUs. See also a working paper prepared by the AAI comparing the European Intel Case with the U.S. Microsoft Cases.
Trento, Economics Faculty, 19th December 2008: "How much should society fuel the greed of innovators? A critical assessment of the economics of intellectual property rights", Luigi Marengo, Laboratory of Economics and Management Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies, Pisa.
A Merger Action Group (MAG) has been created to challenge the Lloyds/HBOS merger (see previous post). The case brought by this interest group was however rejected by the Competition Appeal Tribunal.
"A View from the Italian Competition Authority”, Dr. Alessandra Tonazzi, Italian Competition Authority (AGCM), Faculty of Economics, Trento, December, 12.
Lloyds/HBOS Merger cleared by the UK Secretary of State for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform in spite of the competition concerns expressed by the Office of Fair Trading.
Selon le Conseil de la Concurrence, Décision n° 08-D-25 du 29 octobre 2008, "bien que la pratique d’interdiction de vente par Internet ne soit pas expressément visée dans le règlement communautaire, elle équivaut... à une interdiction de ventes actives et passives. En conséquence, pratiquée au sein d’un réseau de distribution sélective, elle constitue, en vertu du c) de l’article 4 du règlement une restriction caractérisée", et ne peut pas bénéficier d’une exemption individuelle sur le fondement du paragraphe 3 de l’article 81 du traité.
According to the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, Bernard L.Bilski and Rand A.Warsaw, the language of Sec. 101 precludes protection of innovation which is not "transformational" or "properly linked to a machine". In the meanwhile, back in Europe, the President of the European Patent Office, Alison Brimelow, refers to the Enlarged Court of Appeal a socalled point of law comprising four questions concerning the limits of patentability in the field of computing.
Nachdem der deutsche Bundesrat sich bekanntlich für die Schaffung eines bildungs- und wissenschaftsfreundlichen Urheberrechts eingesetzt hat, fordert er nun einen verstärkten Schutz geistigen Eigentums.
Insbesondere hält der Bundesrat für notwendig, anhand von bilateralen Freihandelsabkommen der EU, "Mindeststandards zum Schutz des geistigen Eigentums zu verankern" und "Lücken von TRIPS (Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights) bei der Umsetzung in nationale Rechtsordnungen zu schließen". Unter anderen müsste "eine stärkere Bewusstseinsbildung für die Werte des geistigen Eigentums geschaffen werden"
The US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit has reversed a district court’s award of summary judgment to Cablevision, stating the the "Remote Storage” Digital Video Recorder system ("RS-DVR") proposed by the latter violated the Copyright Act by infringing plaintiffs’ exclusive rights of reproduction and public performance. In the case at issue, the RS-DVR system allows television users to record cable programming on central hard drives housed and maintained by Cablevision, an operator of cable television systems. RS-DVR customers may then receive playback of those programs through their home television sets, using only a remote control and a standard cable box equipped with the RS-DVR software. The customer can record programming by selecting a program in advance from an on screen guide, or by pressing the record button while viewing a given program. Once the program has begun, the customer cannot record earlier portions of it. If multiple people decided to record the same program, a separate copy would be made for each of them. Differently from stand-alone DVR set-top boxes, such as TiVo, recorded cable programming is then stored at a "remote" location, i.e. Cablevision's own servers. According to the Second Circuit, the operation of the RS-DVR system by Cablevision does not amount to direct copyright infringement. The appeals court has considered a bundle of interesting questions, that we will briefly examine in turn.
First of all, the storage system at issue involves the the buffering of data, and the relevant question is whether this process could amount to an infringement of the reproduction right of the content providers (broadcast and cable channels) . In practical terms, the single stream of data gathered from the content providers is split into two: whereas the first is routed immediately to customers, the second "flows into a device called the Broadband Media Router (“BMR”) which buffers the data stream, reformats it, and sends it to the “Arroyo Server,”, id at 7. This latter consists mainly of two data buffers and a number of high-capacity hard disks. After having moved the stream of data to the first buffer (the "primary ingest buffer"), the server automatically inquires as to whether any customers want to record any of that programming. Only in case the customer requests a particular program, "the data for that program move from the primary buffer into a secondary buffer, and then onto a portion of one of the hard disks allocated to that customer". In this respect, content is taken from the stream of programming and stored into the BMR and the first buffer independently from actual customer requests. In order to constitute a copy as defined in US copyright law, the Second Circuit asserts that two conditions should be met: 1) the work should be embodied in a medium, in the sense that it could then be perceived, reproduced, etc., from that medium (briefly, copied from that medium); 2) the work must must remain thus embodied “for a period of more than transitory duration”. Therefore, the storage of content per se results in “copying” only if it is not transitory. The appeals court thus runs counter the Copyright Office’s 2001 DMCA Report, according to which a word is “fixed” in a given medium if the work is capable of being copied from that medium for any amount of time, i.e. also transitory. Works in the case at issue are “embodied” both in the BMR buffer and the primary ingest buffer (i.e. they can be copied, respectively, from the BRM buffer to other components of the RS-DVR system and from the primary ingest buffer onto the Arroyo hard disks), but are not “fixed” because - “no bit of data remains in any buffer for more than a fleeting 1.2 seconds” and - “each bit of data here is rapidly and automatically overwritten as soon as it is processed”. - Secondly, as regards the playback copy made on the hard disks of Cablevision’s Arroyo Server pursuant to a customer request, the question arises whether it is Cablevision who made that copy, and in that case there would be a direct infringement of copyright. According to the appeals court the decisive element should be the “volitional conduct that causes the copy to be made”. Since copies are made automatically upon the customer’s command, a RS-DVR user is similarly situated to a VCR user or to a customer using a photocopier. Cablevision would resemble a “a store proprietor who charges customers to use a photocopier on his premises, and it seems incorrect to say, without more, that such a proprietor “makes” any copies when his machines are actually operated by his customers”. Besides, Cablevision’s control over the content recorded by these customers is limited to the channels of programming available to a customer and not to the programs themselves (as it would be the case in the VOD context).
The final issue attains to the legal nature of the RS-DVR playback to a particular customer, in particular whether it should be considered as the transmission of a performance to the public and therefore an infringement of the content providers’ exclusive public performance rights. According to the Second Circuit, because the RS-DVR system only makes transmissions to one customer using a copy made by that customer, the “universe of people” capable of receiving a RS-DVR transmission is limited to that single customer. As the Court states,“the use of a unique copy may limit the potential audience of a transmission and is therefore relevant to whether that transmission is made to the public”, id. at 41.
See R.Kazemi,Online-TV-Recorder - nun auch in den USA vor dem Aus?,MMR 2007,5, VIII for some German court decisions on the remote recording of TV-programs and the recent WIZZGO decision by the Parisian Tribunal de Grande Instance.
Interesting use of Creative Commons Licences...The Berlin-based fashion label Pamoyo releases the designs for its clothes under a CC BY-NC-SA licence. Everybody is allowed to build upon Pamoyo's creations, provided that the new fashion design is released publicly under the same CC terms.
In its Evaluation Report on the operation of Regulation 1400/2002 concerning motor vehicle distribution and servicing, the European Commission comes to the conclusion that, as far as the goal of increasing competition between dealers by promoting diversity in distribution formats is concerned, this was far from achieved ( pp.5-6) - perhaps not unexpectedly, see a short comment I had written some time ago.
Das Oberlandesgericht Düsseldorf hat am 14.05.2008 entschieden, dass die Schadenersatzklage einer Aktiengesellschaft belgischen Rechts (Cartel Damage Claims - CDC) wegen Kartellrechtsverstößen zulässig ist. Die Klägerin hatte sich sich von 36 zementbeziehenden Unternehmen Schadensersatzansprüche abtreten lassen. Nach Meinung des Gerichts habe die Klägerin die Berechnungsgrundlagen dargelegt und den Mindestschaden ausreichend beziffert. Hinzu kommt, dass das OLG für eine Revision vor dem Bundesgerichtshof keinen Anlass sieht. Daher wird nun das Landgericht über die Begründetheit der Klage entscheiden können. Nach den Ermittlungen des Bundeskartellamtes hatten jegliche Zementhersteller in den Jahren 1993 bis 2002 Preise, Betriebswege und Absatzquoten abgesprochen und Zementimporten verhindert.
Carlo Piana is legal counsel for the Free Software Foundation Europe. On June, 9 he will be in Trento, at the Economics Faculty, to talk about the aftermath of the Microsoft Court of First Instance's decision, and in particular about its relevance for the open source movement (Presentation, in Italian)
Counter to a bill currently before the US Congress, foreseeing an excuse for copyright infringers from significant damages if they can prove that they made a "diligent effort" to find the copyright owner, Lawrence Lessig suggests in an article published in the New York Times that: - the copyright owner, after a 14-year period, should be required to register a work with an approved, privately managed and competitive registry and pay $1 - this rule should not apply to foreign works, or to work created between 1978 and today - photographs and other difficult-to-register works should be subject to this rule depending on the technology available, both to develop simple registration databases and to make research handy and reliable.
Au sujet des critères qui guident l’appréciation des effets des clauses d’exclusivité, le Conseil dans sa décision a considérés comme décisifs le "champ et de la durée de l’exclusivité ainsi que des justifications techniques ou des contreparties économiques de l’accord". Même si l'exclusivité porte sur les programmes du type "premium", les opérateurs ADSL concurrents pourraient, selon le Conseil, "proposer à leurs clients d’autres services interactifs que ceux qui font l’objet du partenariat" ou "développer des partenariats avec les autres diffuseurs pour une diffusion en rattrapage de leurs programmes". Quant à la durée, de deux ans à compter du lancement du service, soit au plus tard à compter du 1er juillet 2008, elle n'est pas jugée "excessive". En plus, le partenariat exclusif réponderait "à une logique économique pour toutes les parties concernées". Les produteurs seraient satisfaits parce que "France Télévisions est le premier opérateur qui les rémunère pour une diffusion en non linéaire". Les partenaires bénéficent "du financement des investissements représentés par l’acquisition des droits, des coûts techniques et des coûts de promotion"; grâce à l'exclusivité, ils sont aussi à mesure "de trouver des sources de financement nouvelles et de développer un service innovant" et de pallier l’incertitude sur la profitabilité des investissements. Pour les consommateurs aussi il y aurait des effets positifs, en particulier dans la mesure où l'exclusivité permet "dans un premier temps l’émergence d’un service innovant que les partenaires sont les premiers à proposer".
A district court in Munich (Landgericht München I)ruled in July 2007 that Skype had violated the GNU General Public Licence 2.0 because it had sold a SMC Networks Linux-based VoIP telephone (WSKP100) without providing both the copy of the license and the source code of the software. In particular, together with the product, there was only a leaflet pointing to an URL where the text of the license and "information on obtaining access to the GPL Code" could have been obtained, whereas according to art. 1 GPL v. 2.0, the licensee is required to "give any other recipients of the Program a copy of this Licensealong with the Program". Moreover, art.3, par.1 together with par.3, requires the licensee to accompany the program/product either with the "complete corresponding machine-readablesource code" or to offer access to copy the source code from a designated place, provided in the latter case that distribution of executable or object code is made by offering access to copy from the same place. Therefore, only if the binary had been made available in Internet for download, which was not the case, the offer to download the source code would have been in compliance with the GPL terms. One of the appeal judges is cited to have said, as reported by Harald Welte's blog "if a publisher wants to publish a book of an author that wants his book only to be published in a green envelope, then that might seem odd to you, but still you will have to do it as long as you want to publish the book and have no other agreement in place". Skype's legal counsel thought it wise to withdraw the appeal. Comment on the district court decision: Jörg Wimmers and Detlef Klett, Computer und Recht 2008, p. 59.
Are the results provided by stock market event studies potentially delivering useful evidence to competition authorities? Probably not, according to a Paper published on the UK Competition Commission website.
Testifying before Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation on proposed ‘Federal Trade Commission Reauthorization Act of 2008, the Commission supported repealing FTC Act's exemption for certain non-profit entities, such as in health-care, see the Prepared Statement.
In particular, the Spanish competition authority intends to investigate if agreements between media operators and football clubs have exclusionary effects. See CNC press release
A highly informative, 269-page Study. Features that (still) prevent, restrict or distort competition: - barriers to entry leading to highly concentrated local markets; - buyer power, when "grocery retailers transfer excessive risks or unexpected costs to their suppliers".
The new Antimonopoly Law (AML) will go into effect in August 2008. See a first comment by NERA consultants Fei Deng and Gregory Leonard. Cfr. also Lorenz, Moritz, The new Chinese Competition Act, In: European competition law review ; 29(2008), 257-263
Laut einer Pressemitteilung der deutschen Wettbewerbsbehörde überwiegen bei der Übernahme von sieben Tochtergesellschaften der Orion Cable durch KDG die Vorteile für den Wettbewerb die Nachteile. Im Übrigen konnten die Zusammenschlussbeteiligten nachweisen, dass aufgrund des Zusammenschlusses Verbesserungen der Wettbewerbsbedingungen auf den Märkten für Breitbandanschlüsse (DSL) und für schmalbandige Anschlüsse eintreten werden.
Der Bundesverband Informationswirtschaft, Telekommunikation und neue Medien (Bitkom) hat einen 40 Seiten umfassenden Leitfaden erstellt, der IT-Erfindern bei Patenanträgen helfen soll.
Decision adopted under Article 24(2) of Regulation 1/2003. According to the EU Commission, Microsoft charged unreasonable prices for access to interface documentation for work group servers during a period starting on 21 June 2006 to 21 October 2007. As from 22 October 2007 Microsoft changed its previous conditions, providing for a licence giving access to the interoperability information for a flat fee of €10 000 and an optional worldwide patent licence for a reduced royalty of 0.4 % of licensees’ product revenues. See also Commission MEMO/08/125 and the transcript (on Groklaw) of Neelie Kroes Statement.
Nach einem Heise Bericht vom 24.02.2008: - der Endkunde kann das per E-Mail-Lieferung gekaufte Dokument "ansehen und zweimal ausdrucken"; - spätestens einen Monat nach dem Datum der Lieferung läuft das elektronische Dokument zudem unwiderruflich ab "und ist nicht mehr zugänglich"; - jede Seite des Ausdrucks wird mit einem Wasserzeichen versehen; - Subito explizit angeschlossene Lieferbibliotheken dürfen Kopien nur noch über den Dienst ausliefern, und nicht mehr etwa über andere übliche Leihverkehrsordnungen; - Preise für den elektronischen Versand wurden auf mindestens 7,75 Euro angehoben; - Subito führt bei den PDF-Kopien auf Lizenzbasis im Gegensatz zu den auf minimal 6,50 Euro festgesetzten Fax- oder Postlieferungen keine Kopiervergütung mehr an die VG Wort ab; - Subito und die Lieferbibliotheken sollen innerhalb von 18 Monaten die Möglichkeiten schaffen, binnen Jahresfrist höchstens zehn Kopien aus einer einzelnen Zeitschrift pro Institution (oder auch Kundenbibliothek, Campus) zu versenden. Über die betroffenen Journale soll ein Ausschuss von Subito und den Verlagen entscheiden. Armin Talke, Mitglied der DBV-Rechtskommission, hat inzwischen ein ausführliches Paper zu Auslegungsschwierigkeiten beim Kopienversand (§ 53a UrhG) veröffentlicht.
Speech delivered at the 100th meeting of the OECD Competition Committee. Rather vague, really. Among others, the issue of the more economic approach to art.82 was not touched on. But, perhaps, it is still coming..
Case C-280/06 Autorità Garante della Concorrenza e del Mercato v. Ente tabacchi italiani . The questions referred for a preliminary ruling by the Consiglio di Stato related to an infringement committed by an entity which then underwent a legal and organisational change (measures taken by the legislature in view of the entity's privatisation). The Court makes clear that: - " When ... an entity infringes competition rules, it falls, according to the principle of personal responsibility, to that entity to answer for that infringement; - "As to the circumstances in which an entity that is not responsible for the infringement can nevertheless be penalised for that infringement, it must be held first that this situation arises if the entity that has committed the infringement has ceased to exist, either in law... or economically; otherwise "undertakings could escape penalties by simply changing their identity through restructurings, sales or other legal or organisational change"; - ..."when an entity that has committed an infringement of the competition rules is subject to a legal or organisational change, this change does not necessarily create a new undertaking free of liability for the conduct of its predecessor that infringed the competition rules, when, from an economic point of view, the two are identical"; - "where two entities constitute one economic entity, the fact that the entity that committed the infringement still exists does not as such preclude imposing a penalty on the entity to which its economic activities were transferred.."; In particular, "applying penalties in this way is permissible where those entities have been subject to control by the same person within the group and have therefore, given the close economic and organisational links between them, carried out, in all material respects, the same commercial instructions".
The suit has been filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia against Cephalon. According to the Commission, Cephalon, faced with threat to its Provigil monopoly, paid more than $200 million to generic drug companies to abandon their patent challenges and forgo entry into the market until April 2012. As Cephalon's CEO allegedly put it shortly after entering these settlements: "We were able to get six more years of patent protection. That's $4 billion in sales no one expected". The FTC is clearly taking the issue very seriously, see also here.
This might be the case according to the Wall Street Jounal, 8 Feb. 2008, in connection with the alleged attempts by Microsoft to pressure countries to ratify the Office Open XML (OOXML) file standard within the ISO (International Organization for Standardization).
It would seem rather obvious that firms should not be entitled to control the market for their products "only" by devising a label or a package in which copyright will subsist. This principle has been clearly spelled out by the Federal Court of Australia in The Polo/Lauren Company L.P. v Ziliani Holdings Pty Ltd [2008] FCA 49 (5 February 2008). The issue involved an injunction to restrain importation and sale of clothing bearing embroidered polo player logo without licence of the owner of copyright, whereas the logo was lawfully embroidered in country of manufacture with licence of owner of copyright. The Court ruled, relying on s 44CCopyright Act (socalled exception of a non-infringing accessory) that the the importer is entitled to engage in parallel importing of those goods into Australia. In particular, the embroidered polo player logo was not primarily a decorative feature, but "a symbol to convey that the clothing was made by the Ralph Lauren design or fashion house. It is a ‘signature’ or label conveying that information of the garment’s provenance" in the meaning of subsection 10(1) Copyright Act.
The FTC filed a brief as amicus curiae with the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on 25 January 2008 urging to reverse a district court's decision that immunized from antitrust laws a pharmaceutical patent settlement agreement. In the case at bar, a patent holder paid a potential rival $400 million to abandon competition and stay off the market. According to the FTC, the patent holder "purchased the exclusion that the patent could not provide". The agreement did not represent the patent holder's exercise of its right to exclude and therefore the patent did not immunize the agreement from antitrust scrutiny.
The proposal in a nutshell: - a new right limited to activities that take place without motive of financial gain; - this new right should make it legal to "share music between two or more parties, whether over Peer to Peer networks, wireless networks, email, CD, DVD, hard drives etc"; - it would be distinct from private copying; - in exchange, Creators and rights holders would be entitled to receive a monthly license fee from each internet and wireless account in Canada (proposed: $5.00 per internet subscription, per month) - this would make Technical Protection Measures obsolete, but not Rights Management Information (RMI) protection "since RMIs will assist in the identification of files and the attribution of rights without posing any problems for consumers".
These 26-page Guidelines apply to mergers between companies either active each at a different level of the supply chain (vertical mergers) or in complementary or otherwise related markets (conglomerate mergers). As with vertical restraints and other business practices, the Commission is willing to recognize that such mergers could engender efficiency gains. Among the anticompetitive effects, the possibility that competing companies are denied access to an inportant supplier or face increased prices for this inputs and this results in higher prices for consumers (and less innovative products?). As in other areas of EU competition law, the Guidelines foresee "save harbours", that is levels of market share and concentration below which anticompetive concern are unlikely. Yet another example of the "more economic approach", it seems.
Un nouveau modèle économique sur le marché de la téléphonie mobile. En contrepartie d'une exclusivité de plus de 24 mois, Apple reçoit des revenus récurrents, entre 10 et 30 % des revenus génerés par l'opérateur sur l'iPhone. Ceci grâce à la force d'attractivité de la marque iPhone...
Der Deutsche Bundestag hat am 15.11.2007 das „Gesetz zur Bekämpfung von Preismissbrauch im Bereich der Energieversorgung und des Lebensmittelhandels“ (s. den Gesetzesentwurf) verabschiedet. Der neu geschaffene § 29 GWB, der allerdings bis 2012 befristet ist, soll es den Kartellbehörden erleichtern, Preise von Elektrizität und Gas zu untersagen, welche die Kosten unangemessen überschreiten oder erheblich höher sind als die Preise von Vergleichsunternehmen. S. hinzu das kritische Sondergutachten der Monopolkommission.
Consumers groups have filed a complaint with the Federal Communications Commission against Comcast, the US number two provider of high-speed Internet access . They ask the FCC to enforce its policy principles on network neutrality by requiring Comcast to stop secretely degrading peer-to-peer applications such as BitTorrent.
A Study by the European Audiovisual Observatory deals (also) with this issue. It is beyond doubt that larger-scale computer games like War of Warcraft create the impression of a moving image. If they are the result of an individual creation process, they could be protected as films, the Study affirms.
Crucial, according to the guidance issued by the OFT, is the expected impact of the transaction on consumer welfare. This is established according to three main elements: market size, magnitude of competition lost by the merger, and the likely duration of that loss. Market size is the sum of all suppliers' annual turnover in the UK in that affected market; where a merger results in several affected markets, the relevant figure will be the aggregate size of all such markets. In case of rapid market growth or decline, this will be taken into account in calculating future market size and importance. "Below the £10 million market size threshold, the OFT would generally consider the market to be of insufficient importance to justify a reference", subject to some caveats: - very high market concentration and low entry prospects - evidence of coordination - the case raises novel issues - "vulnerable" consumers would suffer a substantial proportion of the likely detriment.
Copyright law has become a hot issue, subject to vigorous pressures by well-organised groups, as the 2006 approval of the new French Droit d'auteur has once again shown. But copyright issues are increasingly important also to ordinary citizens, who might want to express their views. The Commissions for the Revision of Italian Copyright Law are apparently more than willing to listen to what all interested parties have to say about the copyright rules they would wish for. The only problem is that the time to do this -at least online, in a transparent way - is much too short, only one week (15-22 November).
Mit dem Titel „Strom und Gas 2007: Wettbewerbsdefizite und zögerliche Regulierung“ (283 S.). Wichtigste Ergebnisse, laut Pressemitteilung. Kein funktionsfähiger Wettbewerb auf den Märkten der leitungsgebundenen Energieversorgung in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland. Die Monopolkommission empfiehlt daher die Senkung insbesondere der strukturellen Marktzutrittsschranken und stellt ein Maßnahmenpaket zusammen.
Economic analysis of copyright legislation: be prepared to see more of it in the future. The Econlaw Study focuses on the music sector. "..(W)e find that the incentives put in place by the PCR system should translate into an increase in the stock of music titles of around 1.5 percent in a period of 25 years. This increase would in turn compensate for the short-term negative effects on the joint welfare of consumers and producers of CE products, increasing total welfare by around 2.8 percent in a period of 25 years, although three fourths of the positive effects would already be in place after a period of 5 years. Regardless of the particular assumptions, the base-line conclusion is that the dynamic mid- and long- term effects of the PCR system on content supply compensate for the negative short-term effects calculated in our static analysis. In sum, the economic impact of the PCR system is not negative and could increase total welfare", p. 11. According to the Study, exemption systems from payment in favour of certain types of users would be inefficient : more information and transaction costs, and this would in the end impact all participants (also the beneficiaries of the exemption), p. 13.
A speech held in Lisbon, 9th November 2007. The announced White Paper on damage actions for breach of the EC competition rules (due for the early months of 2008) will deal specifically with collective redress mechanisms, such as representative actions by consumer associations.
After Competition Commissioner Kroes made clear that EU review won't cover privacy issue, Privacy International and the European Digital Rights Initiative point to the merger's negative implications for dynamic competition on the market for "privacy in advertising".
Read the MEMORANDUM OF POINTS AND AUTHORITIES OF MICROSOFT CORPORATION IN OPPOSITION TO CERTAIN PLAINTIFF STATES’ MOTIONS TO EXTEND THE FINAL JUDGMENTS.
Ein Praxis-Leitfaden von Rechtsanwalt Till Kreutzer im Auftrag des Multimedia-Kontors Hamburg. Ein Pod-Interview mit RA Kreutzer kann als Einführung gelten. Besonders lesenswert aus meiner Sicht ist die praxisnahe Besprechung der in Betracht kommenden Schrankenregelungen (§§ 51, 52a, 53) auch weil ich mich gerade mit diesem Thema beschäftige..
AAI White Paper, main points, in my view: -Google and DoubleClick considered (at least, potential) horizontal competitors in two relevant markets: market for distributing online advertising space of third party (non-search) web sites and market for publisher ad serving tools - therefore, "(I)f the evidence confirms that these markets are concentrated and that entry is otherwise difficult, as appears to be the case, then the merger presents a relatively straightforward case for challenge under the horizontal and non-horizontal merger guidelines" - "The upshot of the merger may be higher costs for web publishers to sell their advertising space, which ultimately may affect the diversity and richness of content available on the Internet and the vibrancy of the media".
Australian Competition Authority holding a different view, it seems
Main issues: -distinction between linear and non-linear services deemed artificial - audiovisual services on the internet too heavily regulated - conflict with standard jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights - regulation of non-linear services not necessary
Economic study on the effects associated with the P2P file sharing (Department of Management Birkbeck, University of London). Main findings, based on a survey of Canadian consumers' habits: P2P filesharing tends to increase rather than decrease music purchasing
Standards endorsed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation and other public interest groups such as the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School. Some statements worth considering: (1) "..where copyrighted materials are employed for purposes of comment, criticism, reporting, parody, satire, or scholarship, or as the raw material for other kinds of creative and transformative works, the resulting work will likely fall within the bounds of fair use" (2) but fair use is not enough: independently thereof, uses that are "noncommercial, creative, and transformative in nature should not be pursued. (3) automated content identification technologies (“filters”) to monitor their systems for potential copyright infringements should incorporate protections for fair use (4) filtering technologies should establish three conditions before taking down or blocking content: - the video track matches the video track of a copyrighted work submitted by a content owner; - the audio track matches the audio track of that same copyrighted work; and - nearly the entirety (e.g, 90% or more) of the challenged content is comprised of a single copyrighted work (i.e., a “ratio test”). (5) Moreover, "Human creators should be afforded the opportunity to dispute the conclusions of automated filters.
From the press release: "A key focus of the ACCC's investigation was whether the combination of Google's network of website publishers and DoubleClick's ad serving capabilities would enable the merged entity to increase the cost of ad serving to website publishers and advertisers.
"In reaching its decision, the ACCC noted that Google and DoubleClick are not close competitors in the provision of ad serving. In addition, the ACCC also took into account the presence of other competitors in this market that would be likely to constrain the merged entity post-merger".
Key findings, in my opinion: - generic manufacturers compete by offering pharmacies rebates off invoice prices (to be considered, however, that two Canadian provinces prohibit rebates); rebates are substantial (on average 40 per cent of the price the pharmacy is invoiced) - but this competition is not reflected in prices paid for the purchase of generics - as the Competition Bureau concludes: "A regulatory and market framework where incentives to supply drug plans more closely reflect the underlying market dynamics could provide significant benefits to drug plans, and in turn to insurers, employers and Canadians".
Presentation (in Italian) given at the Milan Conference "Diritto e tecnologie digitali per la valorizzazione e l'accessibilità delle conoscenze", Friday, 19 October 2007.
From Becta: Becta, the government's education technology agency, has today made a complaint to the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) for alleged anti-competitive practices by Microsoft in the schools software marketplace and in relation to Microsoft's approach to document interoperability.
Amtsgericht Köln, Urteil vom 27. 09. 2007, Aktenzeichen 137 C 293/07. Nach Heise: "Denn zwar geschah das Singen "öffentlich" im Sinne von § 19 Abs. 2 UrhG. Weiterhin verlange die Vorschrift jedoch eine Darbietung, andernfalls wäre diese Bezeichnung im Gesetz überflüssig. "Nicht alles, was öffentlich geschieht, ist aber deswegen zwangsläufig eine Darbietung", befand im konkreten Fall das Gericht. Vielmehr handele es sich hier "um ein eigenes, dem Werkgenuss dienendes Singen und Musizieren, das urheberrechtsfrei ist". Die anwesenden Gäste wären nicht "dazu eingeladen, den Gesängen der Burschenschafter zu lauschen". Nach Deutung des Gerichts war es den Gästen "zumindest freigestellt, sogar mitzusingen". Daran ändere auch das Klavierspiel nichts, denn dieses sei als bloße Begleitung zu beurteilen, "die den Zweck gehabt haben mag, den Gesang zu stützen oder die Feierlichkeit des Geschehens zu unterstreichen."
The Bureau seeks now public comments on the revised Guidelines, which make a clear choice for an average avoidable cost standard. Also, "price matching" will be considered as a reasonable business justification.
Interesting decision about the (un)patentability of business methods, also retracing the history of patent protection, and showing its (frequently overseen) limits and bounderies. The Court of Appeal for the Federal Circuit asserts that "It is thus clear that the present statute does not allow patents to be issued on particular business systems—such as a particular type of arbitration—that depend entirely on the use of mental processes. In other words, the patent statute does not allow patents on particular systems that depend for their operation on human intelligence alone, a field of endeavor that both the framers and Congress intended to be beyond the reach of patentable subject matter. Thus, it is established that the application of human intelligence to the solution of practical problems is not in and of itself patentable". However "When an unpatentable mental process is combined with a machine, the combination may produce patentable subject matter, as the Supreme Court’s decision in Diehr and our own decisions in State Street Bank and AT&T have confirmed." But "The routine addition of modern electronics to an otherwise unpatentable invention typically creates a prima facie case of obviousness".
Here the text of the complaint.The facts can be briefly reckoned as follows:- AT&T is the exclusive provider for iPhone cell phone service in the United States;- the duration of the exclusive agreement is to be five years;- Apple is to receive a portion of AT&T’s profit;- iPhone consumers are to be prohibited from using a cell phone carrier other than AT&T;- Apple is to be restrained for a period of time from developing a version of the iPhone for CDMA wireless networks. As far as competition law is concerned, the facts invest the tying doctrine. In this case, the tying product is the iPhone, whereas the tied product is AT&T's cell phone service.One of the central questions would be: Has Apple sufficient economic power in the tying market to coerce the purchase of the tied product?
