The chapter “Applicable Law” of the International Law Association’s Guidelines on Intellectual Property and Private International Law (“Kyoto Guidelines”) provides principles on the choice of law in international intellectual property matters. The Guidelines confirm the traditional...

To a US appraiser, article 17 of the Digital Single Market Directive suggests the EU has learned from American mistakes (and from its own) in the allocation of internet intermediaries' liability for hosting and communicating user-posted content. Before the DSM Directive, art. 14 of the 2000...

Hyperlinking, at once an essential means of navigating the Internet, but also a frequent means to enable infringement of copyright, challenges courts to articulate the legal norms that underpin domestic and international copyright law, in order to ensure effective enforcement of exclusive rights...

In Star Athletica v. Varsity Brands, the Supreme Court granted certiorari to resolve confusion in the lower courts regarding the “separability” predicate to copyright protection of decorative features of useful articles. The case involved the “surface decorations” of stripes, chevrons,...

After a series of decisions in which the Court of Justice of the European Union appeared to be cutting back on the application of the right of communication to the public with respect to the provision of hyperlinks, the Court's most recent decisions in Brein v. Filmspeler (C-527/15) and Brein v....

This Study endeavors to reconstruct the Vatican's precursor system of copyright, and the author's place in it, inferred from examination of over five hundred privileges and petitions and related documents — almost all unpublished — in the Vatican Secret Archives. The typical account of the...

Two encroachments, one long-standing, the other a product of the digital era, cramp the author's place in copyright today. First, most authors lack bargaining power; the real economic actors in the copyright system have long been the publishers and other exploiters to whom authors cede their...

This survey of recent U.S. fair use decisions examines the domestic evolution of the doctrine, particularly in light of the significant expansion of noninfringing “transformative” uses. The article also considers the U.S.’ compliance with its international obligations under the Berne...

Avoision describes conduct which seeks to exploit 'the differences between a law's goals and its self-defined limits' - a phenomenon particularly apparent in tax law. This short paper explains how the technology company Aereo utilised avoision strategies in an attempt to design its way out of...