In a landmark ruling last week, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) has held that Google is not required to carry out a de-referencing (effectively, the “right to be forgotten”) on non-EU versions of its search engine. The case was brought by Google on appeal, having received an initial fine of €100,000 from the French data protection regulator, CNIL, back in 2016 after it had ruled that Google’s self-imposed restriction to only…

On 7 June 2019 a  European Directive came into force amending the 1993 ‘Cable and Satellite’ Directive. Its effect was to: extend the EEA ‘country of origin’ rights clearance principle to a limited set of online broadcast and catch-up services; extend the mandatory collective rights management of retransmission from cable distribution to all forms of retransmission; and provide statutory clarification of the legal treatment of ‘direct injection’. What is the reasoning behind the reform? In an ever…

On 26 March 2019, the European Parliament approved the EU Copyright Directive. Article 15 (originally 11) of the revised EU Copyright directive prohibits online content providers from linking to news outlets/publications without the prior authority of the publisher – the so called “Link Tax”. This means that for an online content provider to be able to link to a news article on their site, it will need a licence from the publisher. It may…

On 26 March 2019 the European Parliament approved the draft EU Copyright in the Digital Single Market Directive. The copyright reforms have sparked large scale controversy amongst the tech giant community, condemning the reforms as impractical and burdensome. Whereas many (not all) authors and members of the performing artist industry have welcomed such proposals, favouring fairer protection and remuneration for their works. The Directive came into force on  6 June 2019 and Member States have until…

Thousands of European and US companies will have been relieved by the recent announcement that the EU-US Privacy Shield (the framework for regulating transatlantic exchanges of personal data) is secure for another year. However, it may be premature to rejoice: the EU Commission’s review highlighted two key issues: the continued reluctance by the US to institute fundamental safeguards for individuals’ personal data; and the imminent need to appoint an independent ombudsman. Coupled with the impending…