On 19 July 2010 the Court of The Hague rendered a judgment in the preliminary relief proceedings instituted by Brein against Ziggo. Brein demanded Ziggo to shut down The Pirate Bay for its subscribers. The judge in preliminary relief proceedings rejected this claim with a remarkable argument and, therefore, in my view, an incorrect outcome.

For many years Brein has been fighting The Pirate Bay, which has been active since 2004 and is the largest BitTorrent website of the world. On this …read more

On July 8, 2010, the European Court of Justice ruled on the circumstances of trademark infringement by the use of Google AdWords. AdWords are search words that, if they are typed in a search engine like Google by an internet user, create sponsored links or advertisements next to the “objective” results that are selected on the basis of algorithm. AdWords are sold by an auction to the highest bidder. The highest bidders gets the top sponsored link in …read more

The Finnish National Conciliator arrived home late at night with his girlfriend, apparently not hindered by the fact that his wife, who was not amused, was also living in the same house. There was a fight: the National Conciliator and his female friend against the wife. The son of the house also received some blows (given by the female friend). The National Conciliator and his female friend were arrested and later convicted. 

The Finnish magazine 7-päviää wrote about this fight and published photographs and the full name of the female friend (who, as the magazine revealed, also appeared to be dancing the samba with yet another man). Was this allowed? Or was this an unlawful invasion of the privacy …read more

In an online publication, a woman and her husband have accused several institutions of doing nothing to stop the sexual abuse of her daughter and several grandchildren by her ex-husband. The couple was ordered in preliminary relief proceedings to remove the online publication from the Internet “to the extent that these articles cannot be retrieved anymore in any way whatsoever by any search request on the Internet”. The order carried a penalty of EUR 2,500 for each day of non-compliance, with …read more

During the World Cup 2010, Bavaria has caused a great upheaval with the Dutch Dress. After the Netherlands - Denmark match, two ‘Bavaria babes’ were even arrested by the South-African authorities. They risked a prison sentence of six months maximum for developing commercial activities in a soccer stadium. It was not exclusively their own initiative to perform a striptease in a group in the stadium: it is said that Bavaria had paid their tickets and accommodation costs and the films of the stripping ‘Bavaria babes’ were placed on YouTube. This is called ambush marketing: profiting from the media attention during a …read more

European Court of Justice, 3 June 2010, C-258/08 (Lotto / Ladbrokes)

The Netherlands have a very restrictive national gaming policy. Offering games of chance in the Netherlands is only allowed with a license based on the Betting and Gaming Act (Wet op de Kansspelen, “WoK”) The same is true for games of chance on the internet, for example if the gambling website is directed at Dutch visitors or is advertised in the Netherlands. Although this policy is intended for the protection of consumers and minors in particular, Dutch license holders like De Lotto have been trying for years with this policy to keep foreign online gaming providers, including the British …read more

Statements Le Pen Resulted in a Conviction in France
In a recent judgment, the European Court of Human Rights (published only in the French language) has rejected a complaint of the politician of the Front National Jean-Marie Le Pen. Le Pen complained against his conviction for inciting hatred in France. His conviction was based on, amongst other things, the following statement: ‘The day there are no longer 5 million but 25 million Muslims in France, they will be in charge. And the French will press their backs against the wall, will step off the sidewalk with their eyes fixed on the ground. If they do not do so, they will be told: “Why are you looking at me. You wanna fight?” Then you’d better start running, before you’re beaten up.’  

Just like Dutch …read more

The ‘Dutch Major League’ (Eredivisie) consists of the eighteen best soccer clubs in the Netherlands and Eredivisie Media & Marketing C.V. (”Eredivisie Media”) manages the commercial exploitation of the media rights and sponsoring rights of the Dutch major football league clubs. Broadcaster NOS has obtained the broadcasting rights and pays a considerable fee for the exclusive right to broadcast highlights of major league matches in, inter alia, Studio Sport. Fourteen Dutch regional broadcasters have united in an attempt to get permission to broadcast short extracts of major league matches, and have claimed in preliminary relief proceedings that Eredivisie Media had to give up footage of …read more

FTD is a provider of a Usenet Application which allows people to spot posts on Usenet (to find content more easily). Dutch TV producer Eyeworks found out that through FTD’s application its film ‘A Woman Visits the Doctor’ [Komt een vrouw bij de dokter] could be downloaded via Usenet. Eyeworks claimed that by facilitating an infringement on its copyright, FTD actually infringed upon Eyeworks’s copyright itself.

In a groundbreaking ruling in summary proceedings, which is published here in English (the Dutch original can be found here), the court of The Hague in The Netherlands accepted Eyework’s claim. The court found that the relevant question is ‘whether the behavior of FTD allows users to download copyrighted files (in an easier manner) and that it thus makes such files in fact available to the public.’ The court concluded that FTD indeed infringed …read more

On 3 June 2010 the Advertising Code Committee (”RCC”) allowed a complaint from environmental organization Greenpeace about an advertising campaign of the oil company Trafigura. The RCC ruled that Trafigura had violated the rules of the Dutch Advertising Code in this advertising campaign, which concerned the Probo Koala affair. In half-page-sized advertisements about the Probo Koala affair, …read more