Full Stop Ahead: Public interest in blocking digital content
It makes for the perfect ideological storm when IP law and ICT law meet and the right to freedom of expression stands in the way. Capitalist and socialist, activist and pacifist, pragmatist and idealist: differing legal experts abound in the battle for, or against, IP rights in the digital environment. Two recent developments which illustrate this tension, might serve South Africans well, if observed with care. First, the recent ruling of the General Court of the European Union in Constantin Film Produktion GmbH v EUIPO[i] made it clear that aural vulgarity could be a bar to the registration...
Read MoreIP Heirlooms – Testamentary Assignment of Digital Contents
Recent media reports raised several questions about the transfer of so-called digital “property” by means of a testamentary bequest. These digital works include e-books, songs, videos, movies, applications and other forms of intellectual expression recorded in digital format and distributed to end-users by means of web traders such as Kalahari, Amazon and Apple iTunes. According to these reports, individuals who sought to provide for the transfer of their personal collections of digital works after their death found that the law does not specifically provide for such transfer of...
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