Unfair competition, copyright law and safe harbour

MYŠKA, Matěj and Zdeněk KUČERA. Unfair competition, copyright law and safe harbour. 2021.

Basic information

• Original name: Unfair competition, copyright law and safe harbour
• Authors: MYŠKA, Matěj (203 Czech Republic, guarantor, belonging to the institution) and Zdeněk KUČERA (203 Czech Republic).
• Edition: 2021.

Other information

• Original language: English
• Type of outcome: Organization of a workshop
• Field of Study: 50501 Law
• Country of publisher: Czech Republic
• Confidentiality degree: is not subject to a state or trade secret
• WWW: Web konference
• RIV identification code: RIV/00216224:14220/21:00123022
• Organization unit: Faculty of Law
• Keywords in English: copyright law; unfair competition; ISP liability; safe harbour
• Tags: rivok

Abstract

On 31. 8. 2021 the Czech Supreme Court issued its groundbreaking ruling dealing with liability of operators of hosting services. Unfair competition should provide protection even in the cases where copyright is not actually infringed - it is sufficient that the plaintiff or its members are profiting from someone else's work, regardless of any real harm to the plaintiff or its members (Czech national group of the International Federation of Phonographic Industry). The national safe harbour rules shall not apply. Whereas the rightholders laudated this opinion, it raises serious questions as to the (non-) applicability of the safe harbour rules and was even dubbed as “unfair competition on steroids” and deemed as ripe for preliminary reference to the CJEU. After the initial comments and discussion all participants were invited to further discuss this judicial development and to also reflect on the broader impact thereof.

Links

• MUNI/A/1292/2020, interní kód MU: Name: Právo a technologie IX (Acronym: PAT IX)

Investor: Masaryk University