Tuesday 4 May 2010

Something to take your mind off the pain

If going to the dentist is not your favourite thing, try distracting yourself in one of the following ways:

1. Stamp on your toe. One pain distracts you from another.
2. Listen to piped musak in the waiting room. If there isn’t any...
3. Consider this ECJ reference posted on the IPO website, SCF - CONSORIO FONOGRAFICI v Marco DEL CORSO:

(a) Are the Rome Convention for the Protection of Performers, Producers of Phonograms and Broadcasting Organisations of 26 October 1961, the TRIPS Agreement (Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights) and the WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organisation) Treaty on Performances and Phonograms (WPPT) directly applicable within the Community legal order?

(b) Are the abovementioned sources of uniform international law also directly effective within the context of private-law relationships?

(c) Do the concepts of 'communication to the public' contained in the abovementioned treaty-law texts mirror the Community concepts contained in Directives 92/100/EEC and 2001/29/EC and, if not, which source should take precedence?

(d) Does the broadcasting, free of charge, of phonograms within private dental practices engaged in professional economic activity, for the benefit of patients of those practices and enjoyed by them without any active choice on their part, constitute 'communication to the public' or 'making available to the public' for the purposes of the application of Article 3(2) (b) of Directive 2001/29/EC?

(e) Does such an act of transmission entitle the phonogram producers to the payment of remuneration?

ECJ references taken out of context have extra brainteaser value. How on earth, you ask yourself, did they arrive at that?

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