sutton043

On 26 November 2018, the EU Commission initiated proceedings for infringement of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union against 17 (out of 28) Member States for non-compliance with the Directive requiring the transposition into national law of the Marrakesh Treaty (Directive (EU) 2017/1564). The Marrakesh Treaty is a WIPO-administered convention that was signed on 27 June 2013 and entered into force on 30 September 2016. The convention seeks to facilitate “the production and international transfer of specially-adapted books for people with blindness or visual impairment” ( here ). This was done by creating copyright limitations and exceptions to allow the creation of copies of protected works accessible to the visually impaired, when none is otherwise available. As member of both WIPO and WTO, the EU has authority to sign and ratify treaties on behalf of its Member States and to then require their implementation into national law via EU instruments such as directives or re...

November 2018 is most certainly a good month for the auction house Christie’s. Last week, Christie’s recorded the highest sale for an artwork created by a living artist. ‘ Portrait of An Artist (Pool with Two Figures) ’ by David Hockney, sold for 90.3 million dollars, beating Jeff Koons’ ‘Balloon Dog’ (58.4 million dollars). Two weeks before the record sale, the auction house won a tortuous legal battle over which party has the burden of the re-sale right royalty, ruling in favour of the seller (Christie’s) and thereby overturning the position in place since 1920.  At stake was the [rather fundamental] question: ‘who owes the re-sale right royalty: seller or buyer?’. This point of law had been agitating the French jurisprudence since 2012, despite a ruling of the CJEU in 2015, against which the French appeal judges subsequently resisted. The French Supreme Court (Cour de Cassation) put an end to all suspense and resistance, stating it was perfectly legal for a contract to stipulate...