Month: August 2018

Copyright Directive – Radical Copyright Protection Regime to takeover in European Union

After adopting Digital Single Market (Proposal) on 6th May 2015, the European Union Commission is out with its Proposal for a Directive of the European Parliament and of the Council on Copyright in Digital Single Market, Article 13 of which is a breakthrough of copyright norms worldwide. It has been reiterated as follows:

“Article 13.”

Use of protected content by information society service providers storing and giving access to large amounts of works and other subject-matter uploaded by their users

1) Information society service providers that store and provide to the public access to large amounts of works or other subject-matter uploaded by their users shall, in cooperation with rightholders, take measures to ensure the functioning of agreements concluded with rightholders for the use of their works or other subject-matter or to

prevent the availability on their services of works or other subject-matter identified by rightholders through the cooperation with the service providers. Those measures,

such as the use of effective content recognition technologies, shall be appropriate and proportionate.”

This means that all the Internet Platforms that hold a large amount of user-uploaded material like Facebook and Youtube are now in charge of policing the content before its publication into their platforms to avoid copyright infringement, and will have no more ‘Neutral Intermediary’ protection they usually availed by E-commerce Directive in EU.

The proposal above which mandates a content recognition technology is contradictory to EU’s E-commerce Directive. Recital 47 of the e-Commerce Directive mandates that “The Member States are prevented from imposing a monitoring obligation on service providers only with respect to obligations of a general nature; this does not concern monitoring obligations in a specific cases.” But this recital can be easily circumvented because of its vague language aided with the language of Recital 48 providing that nothing can stop the member states to apply reasonable “Duty of care” to the service providers.

Recent Youtube Copyright Infringement

An uploader published copyright protected (allegedly stolen) videos of Plus 4, An Austrian Television Station and sued YouTube for allowing it to be published. If a similar judgment were to happen in the United States, the implications could be huge.

YouTube has been sitting safely under the umbrella of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act‘s “Safe Harbor” clause for years. After Viacom sued YouTube in 2007 for hosting around 79,000 videos that featured some Viacom-owned content, the court ruled in favor of the video platform because it could answer “no” to three questions: Did YouTube have “knowledge or awareness of any specific infringements”? Did YouTube purposefully shield itself from knowledge of the infringements? And did YouTube have the “right and ability to control” activity on its site that led to those infringements? In essence, answering no to all of these questions makes YouTube a “neutral intermediary,” exactly what the Vienna court believes it is not.

(https://www.tubefilter.com/2018/06/11/austrian-court-youtube-copyright-infringement-case/)

Therefore, the contentious Article 13 of the Copyright Directive goes for a vote on 20th June 2018. This Article if enforced is likely to cause uproar amongst digital activists and also make the copyright provisions highly strict and complicate publications and broadcasts, and will also lead to erasing away of existing content like memes, music covers, etc, as a non-transparent filtering device will be mandated to be installed by such hosts.

Bitcoin Trademarked in the UK – Should the Bitcoin Community really worry?

A company in the U.K. has trademarked the term “Bitcoin” pressing to enforce the trademark’s use which is reported to scare crypto-currency enthusiasts. Is there really a need to be dreaded? Let’s analyse.

The story began with an Etsy (An E-commerce website headed in Brooklyn) seller getting the letter from the lawyer representing the Bitcoin trademark holder in relation to Bitcoin-branded clothing items. It stated the following:

It has come to our client’s attention that you are offering for sale a variety of clothing bearing the Bitcoin trademark on Etsy.co.uk. [Our Client] has not authorised your use of the Bitcoin trademark on and in relation to clothing. Such use, therefore, amounts to trademark infringement pursuant to s10(1) of the Trade Marks Act 1994,” the letter read.”

But in an act of goodwill, the letter goes on to note that though the trademark holder could take action against the seller but it gave the seller 14 days to remove the infringing goods instead.

Cryptocurrency sites went through a shock over the fact that a company has not only trademarked bitcoin but were also enforcing the trademark, with one site even going as far as saying the trademark holder will “have authority over everything Bitcoin, at least in the U.K.”

The Legal Truth

The truth is not even near to the speculations, as the Trademark law is clear on the point that Trademarks relate to specific goods and services. It is considered as a pre-requisite in Trademark law. Trademark used in the present case, i.e. UK00003279106, registered by a company called A.B.C. IP Holdings South West only covers three classes of goods: U.K. classes 25, 32 and 33, covering clothing, beverages, and alcoholic beverages, respectively.

The Particular trademark only pertains to the above-mentioned classes and the trademark holder has absolutely no authority and effect over anything to do with Trademark of the “Bitcoin” outside the aforementioned classes.

And since it is not something unprecedented, therefore, the owner cannot enforce his right over other classes before obtaining a registration to the same effect. Further, a search of the U.K. Intellectual Property Office trademark registry finds multiple trademark registrations for bitcoin, such as UK00003029238 from 2013 which pertains to “chocolate and confectionary.”

Still a fact for the ‘Cryptocurrency Community’ to worry

A trademark registered with status: WE00001288610, covers a lot of Bitcoin-related services

The protected trademark is registered to Japanese Bitcoin exchange “bitFlyer” and covers the use of bitcoin in six different classes. It covers over a thousand items, however, the most important and disturbing things is that it includes the use of bitcoin in computer programs, advertising, financial services, electronic commerce and much more, all of which are vital parts of bitcoin itself.

There appears to be no record of “bitFlyer” having actually attempted to enforce its trademark in the past, and it’s not clear it ever would. But if the cryptocurrency community wants to get its knickers in a twist over trademarks, this is where people should be looking and not at a two-bit seller, i.e. Etsy, who is engaged in selling T-shirts.