A Global Technology Sector Blog
Written by: Carol Umhoefer; Farid Bouguettaya; and Maruschka Graham
In 1994, France implemented a law, known as the “Toubon Law” after France’s then-minister of Culture, Jacques Toubon, to preserve the French language, protect French consumers and promote French culture. At the time, the world wide web…
Continue Reading “Toubon Law” 20 Years On: The Cyber Economy and France’s Law on the Mandatory Use of the French Language
By Jan Pohle, Partner, Cologne
(Decision of 28 October 2014, VI ZR 135/13)
The German Federal Supreme Court had to decide whether the Federal Republic of Germany may save the IP address of a visitor to their websites beyond the termination of the respective user activity. The Supreme Court decided
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Continue Reading Storing IP addresses – German referal to the ECJ
Author: Ceyhun Pehlivan, Associate, Madrid
Spain’s Competition Supervision Authority (CNMC), currently in charge of both competition and regulatory matters has ordered the main Mobile Network Operators (MNO) in Spain, namely Telefónica (Movistar), Vodafone and Orange, to ensure wholesale 4G network access for the Mobile Virtual Network Operators (MVNO).
This decision…
Continue Reading Spain – Competition Authority orders 4G operators to give MVNOs access
Article 29 Working Party adopts guidelines on the implementation on the Right to be Forgotten judgment of the CJEU
By Patrick Van Eecke & Julie De Bruyn
The Article 29 Working Party, the European data protection advisory body existing of representatives of the national data protection authorities of the EU Member States, announced yesterday to have adopted guidelines – for national data protection authorities – on the implementation of the Court of Justice’s ruling on the right to be forgotten.
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Continue Reading Europe: Right to be forgotten guidelines adopted by WP29
By Patrick Van Eecke and Antoon Dierick
Almost five months after federal parliamentary elections took place, the negotiators from the four political parties around the negotiating table (Flemish parties NVA, CD&V and Open VLD and Walloon party MR) reached a coalition agreement which contains quite a few interesting policy initiatives…
Continue Reading BELGIUM: Belgian government’s new focus on privacy and technology laws
By Florence Guthfreund-Roland & Mathilde Hallé
On April 10, 2014, the Court of First Instance of Paris found that VIAGOGO, a Swiss company operating a website selling sports tickets on the Internet, had no right to sell tickets for a French soccer game organized by the French Professional Soccer League. …
Continue Reading FRANCE: A French Court orders a Swiss company selling French game tickets over the Internet to prevent French Internet users from accessing part of its websites
A recent case contains some salutary lessons for service providers concerning liability for fraudulent use of their services. It appears that unless the contract has clear terms to the contrary then the service provider, not the end user, will pay for fraudulent use of a service by hackers even if…
Continue Reading Fraudulent use of a service by hackers – a lesson for service providers
By Patrick Van Eecke and Anthony Cornette
In an earlier blog post, Patrick Van Eecke and Anthony Cornette discussed the impact of the ECJ Case C-131/12. The authors now provide some further insight on the latest developments relating to the ECJ case on the ‘Right to be Forgotten’
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Continue Reading EU: Update on Google’s Right to be forgotten
By Patrick Van Eecke, Alexis Fierens and Ivanka Zdravkova (DLA Piper – Brussels)
By the judgment rendered on 22 October 2013 in the Belgian version of the long-lasting The Pirate Bay saga, the Belgian Court of Cassation (Belgium’s Supreme Court) confirmed the lawfulness of a far-reaching injunction order against all national Internet service providers. According to this judgment, the examining magistrate (juge d’instruction) is entitled to order, in a single injunction, all national Internet service providers to block access to IP rights-infringing content which is hosted by a server, linked to a specific main domain name, and such by employing all possible technical means at their disposal or at least by blocking all domain names that refer to a specified main domain name (“thepiratebay.org“).
According to the Court of Cassation, such a judicial order does not impose a general obligation of monitoring upon the Internet service providers and, therefore, does not constitute a violation of Article 21(1) of the Belgian Act of 11 March 2003 on certain legal aspects of information society services (the “E-Commerce Act”) implementing Article 15(1) of the EC Directive 2000/31/EC of the European Parliament and the Council of 8 June 2000 on certain legal aspects of information society services, in particular electronic commerce, in the Internal Market (the “E-Commerce Directive”).
By Patrick Van Eecke and Antoon Dierick – DLA Piper Brussels;
On November 6, a Paris Court ordered Google to filter out hyperlinks to images of former F1 boss Max Mosley in an allegedly Nazi-themed sadomasochistic orgy. (TGI Paris, 17e ch., 6 novembre 2013, RG 11/07970, Max Mosley c. Google Inc et Google France)
This judgement is situated on the crossroads of privacy rights, freedom of information and cooperation duties of internet intermediaries. A soon to be expected European Court of Justice judgement in a similar case may bring more clarity in finding the right balance between these rights and values.
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Continue Reading Europe: Mosley v Google – game, set but not match yet.
