Dr. Maja Bogataj Jančič on the Days of Slovenian Lawyers 2010
On 15 October, dr. Maja Bogataj Jančič held a lecture on the Days of Slovenian Lawyers 2010 in the section “Modern technologies in EU law: from the contracts to the gambling”. On the basis of the case Google France, Google Inc. v Louis Vuitton Malletier she presented the problem of misuse of trademarks on the Internet with the help of the advertising service Google AdWords and similar systems.
These systems enable to buy words on the search engine. Therefore, as the subscriber enters the word in the search engine, the advertisement of the subject who bought the word appears amongst the search results. The problem is when the word represents a protected trademark of some other subject. Words will usually be bought by providers of concurrent products or services or by sellers of counterfeit products.
Google won in the above mentioned case. The Court of Justice of the EU said that Google can sell words that are identical to trademarks as long as it removes them if it becomes aware of the illegality of the data or the circumstances. Google does not enjoy full immunity as it can be found guilty if it turns out that it encourages trademark infringements.
In the lecture, the author provided a fundamental analysis of such advertising systems from the point of view of intellectual property law and foresaw the effects of the judgement on their further development.
The Internet Archive is a non-profit organization that maintains the Open Library, a digital library index, and is dedicated to preserving knowledge. As many of the works in the Internet Archive are under copyright, the Archive uses a system of controlled digital lending based on digital rights management to prevent unauthorized downloading or copying of copyrighted books. In March 2020, due to the circumstances surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic, the Internet Archive established the National Emergency Library, eliminating the waiting lists used in the Open Library and expanding access to books for all readers. In June 2020, the Emergency National Library faced a lawsuit from four book publishers and was ultimately closed.
The 43rd session of the WIPO Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (hereinafter SCCR) made substantial progress on the issues advocated by the A2K Coalition (Access to Knowledge Coalition), which IPI is a member of. This year’s session was the most productive on the issues of exceptions and limitations. James Love (Knowledge Ecology International), a long-time observer at WIPO, described the outcome and the impact of the public interest community as the strongest since the conclusion of the Marrakech Treaty, which brought global copyright exceptions for the benefit of the blind and visually impaired.
Today, March 17, 2023, a symposium on law in the information society is taking place in the golden lecture hall of the Faculty of Law in Ljubljana. Dr. Maja Bogataj Jančič will present copyright aspects of artificial intelligence at the symposium.
The third day of the 43rd session of the WIPO Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights is intended for discussion on the topic of exceptions and limitations to copyright, especially in connection with the right to research.