News on Intellectual Property Rights

“Digital” is written big in the coalition agreement , which was signed to give way to the new German government. Will this propell Germany onto the front seat in international internet politics.

There is user-generated content in many shapes – from musicians setting up their own labels, funded and supported by users to remixes of the latest political campaign slogans. What is still pending, is a genuine European copyright reform which would address this type of content.

Russian internet industry and civil society groups bite back at newest law designed to protect corporations holding rights to audiovisual material.

Fans who engage in the subtitling of motion pictures have been prosecuted on several occasions. A recent case in Sweden results in yet another discussion: do the actions of fans violate copyright?

It looks like a negotiated revolution: members of the World Intellectual Property Organization signed a treaty that will allow exemptions from copyright in favour of visually impaired people.

The majority of the European Parliament welcomed the start of the negotiations for the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership – a EU-US free trade agreement - in a resolution released in Strasbourg on May 15. The Green Party wanted more conditions to avoid a potential degradation of European standards in data protection. European civil