The European Court of Justice (ECJ), formally just the Court of Justice, is the supreme court of the European Union in matters of European Union law. As a part of the Court of Justice of the European Union, it is tasked with interpreting EU law and ensuring its uniform application across all EU member states under Article 263 of the Treaty of the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU).
The copyright law of the European Union is the copyright law applicable within the European Union. Copyright law is largely harmonized in the Union, although country to country differences exist. The body of law was implemented in the EU through a number of directives, which the member states need to enact into their national law. The main copyright directives are the Copyright Term Directive 2006, the Information Society Directive and the Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market. Copyright in the Union is furthermore dependent on international conventions to which the European Union or their member states are part of, such as TRIPS Agreement or the Berne Convention.
Council Directive 93/98/EEC of 29 October 1993 harmonising the term of protection of copyright and certain related rights is a European Union directive in the field of EU copyright law, made under the internal market provisions of the Treaty of Rome. It was replaced by the 2006 Copyright Term Directive (2006/116/EC).
In computer networks, download means to receive data from a remote system, typically a server such as a web server, an FTP server, an email server, or other similar systems. This contrasts with uploading, where data is sent to a remote server.
A database right is a sui generis property right, comparable to but distinct from copyright, that exists to recognise the investment that is made in compiling a database, even when this does not involve the "creative" aspect that is reflected by copyright. Such rights are often referred to in the plural: database rights.
R v Secretary of State for Transport was a judicial review case taken against the United Kingdom government by a company of Spanish fishermen who claimed that the United Kingdom had breached European Union law by requiring ships to have a majority of British owners if they were to be registered in the UK. The case produced a number of significant judgements on British constitutional law, and was the first time that courts held that they had power to restrain the application of an Act of Parliament pending trial and ultimately to disapply that Act when it was found to be contrary to EU law.
Copyright in the Netherlands is governed by the Dutch Copyright Law, copyright is the exclusive right of the author of a work of literature or artistic work to publish and copy such work.
The threshold of originality is a concept in copyright law that is used to assess whether a particular work can be copyrighted. It is used to distinguish works that are sufficiently original to warrant copyright protection from those that are not. In this context, "originality" refers to "coming from someone as the originator/author", rather than "never having occurred or existed before".
In copyright law, related rights are the rights of a creative work not connected with the work's actual author. It is used in opposition to the term "authors' rights". Neighbouring rights is a more literal translation of the original French droits voisins. Both authors' rights and related rights are copyrights in the sense of English or U.S. law.
The European Union Computer Programs Directive controls the legal protection of computer programs under the copyright law of the European Union. It was issued under the internal market provisions of the Treaty of Rome. The most recent version is Directive 2009/24/EC.
The rule of the shorter term, also called the comparison of terms, is a provision in international copyright treaties. The provision allows that signatory countries can limit the duration of copyright they grant to foreign works under national treatment to no more than the copyright term granted in the country of origin of the work.
SAS Institute Inc. v World Programming Ltd (2012) C-406/10 was a decision of the European Court of Justice which established that copyright protection does not extend to software functionality, programming languages, and file types.
Google Spain SL, Google Inc. v Agencia Española de Protección de Datos, Mario Costeja González (2014) is a decision by the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU). It held that an Internet search engine operator is responsible for the processing that it carries out of personal information which appears on web pages published by third parties.
Copyright in compilation is a facet of copyright law that may provide copyright protection to a compilation of material, irrespective of copyright in the underlying material.
European Court of Justice (ECJ)
Coman and Others v Inspectoratul General pentru Imigrări and Ministerul Afacerilor Interne is a 2018 case of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) that affirmed residency rights in EU countries, to the spouse of an EU citizen who is exercising their right to freedom of movement and if the marriage was legally performed in an EU member state.
H.N. v Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform and others, [2012] IESC 58; [2013] 1 IR 142, is an Irish Supreme Court case in which the Court referred the following question to the Court of Justice of the European Union for preliminary ruling in accordance with Article 267 Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU):
Does Council Directive 2004/83/EC, interpreted in the light of the principle of good administration in the law of the European Union and, in particular, as provided by Article 41 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, permit a Member State, to provide in its law that an application for subsidiary protection status can be considered only if the applicant has applied for and been refused refugee status in accordance with national law?
In EU law, reverse discrimination occurs when the national law of a member state of the European Union provides for less favourable treatment of its citizens or domestic products than other EU citizens/goods under EU law. Since the creation of the Single Market, the right of EU citizens to move freely within the EU with their families. The right to free movement was codified in EU Directive 2004/38/EC which applies across the whole EEA. However, reverse discrimination is permitted in EU law because of the legal principle of subsidiarity, i.e. EU law is not applicable in situations purely internal to one member state. This rule of purely internal situation does not apply if the EU citizens can provide a cross-border link, e.g. by travel or by holding dual EU citizenship. EU citizens and their families have an automatic right of entry and residence in all EU countries except their own, with exceptions created by a cross-EU state border link. For example, an Irish citizen living in Germany with his family before returning to Ireland can apply for EU family rights. This is referred to as the Surinder Singh route. The cross-border dimension has been the focus of many court cases in recent years, from McCarthy to Zambrano.
