NEWS Dutch court says linking is not a copyright breach
said otherwise. In that case, a court in Te Hague found that the embedding of radio streams on two websites, one of which was
nederland.fm, constituted copyright infringement.
Te rulings have been part of a big discussion on whether linking is infringing, said Bjorn Schipper, a lawyer at Bousie Advocaten in Amsterdam, but the latest decision confirms the “accepted” rule.
“We now have at least two decisions that say linking is not an intervention and therefore not an infringement,” he said.
A Dutch appeals court has ruled that providing hyperlinks to infringing copyrighted material does not count as a breach of IP.
Te Amsterdam Court of Appeal cleared website
GeenStijl.nl of
infringing Playboy’s copyright
when it linked to leaked nude pictures due to be published by the adult magazine.
GeenStijl.nl, a blogging site, had published an article in October 2011 about pictures of Dutch TV presenter Britt Dekker that were set to be released by Playboy two months later.
Te article contained a link to a zip file with the pictures, hosted on file-sharing site filefactory.
com, before being updated with a link to ImageShack, a site that hosts photos. Two more articles with links were later published. Aſter Playboy sued for copyright infringement, a lower Amsterdam court said the hyperlinks were a new publication—and therefore infringed Playboy’s rights.
But that decision was overturned by the city’s Court of Appeal on November 19, though the court said
GeenStijl.nl had unlawfully published Playboy’s photos, ordering it to pay damages.
Te ruling is the second in the Netherlands to confirm that linking to infringement is not a copyright breach itself, while a third decision
“I am happy with the outcome of this decision. Te Amsterdam court stipulates the general rule.”
Schipper added: “Te ruling applies only to this case, but because it is an appeals court and they have made some general considerations, a lot of parties could use this decision in their cases about whether hyperlinking is an infringement.”
“Te discussion will be ongoing,” Schipper said.
Tere are at least two cases in which the CJEU has been asked to rule on whether linking to infringing material is a copyright breach. Te cases, both referred from Sweden, are expected to be decided next year.
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squiresanders.com www.worldipreview.com Trademarks Brands and the Internet Volume 2, Issue 4 9
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