Appeal Court: Hyperlinks Do Not Infringe Copyright
THE HAGUE, 20/11/13 - The linking forward by a website to another website on which protected material is made public is no copyright violation, an appeal court in Amsterdam ruled Tuesday.
The appeal court was ruling in a dispute between Playboy publisher Sanoma and website Geenstijl.nl. The site placed a link to an Australian site on which photos could be seen of a Playboy model, Britt Dekker – before these were published in Playboy, The case was brought in September 2012 by Sanoma, which claimed that GeenStijl had infringed Playboy’s copyright. A lower court initially ruled that this was the case, but the Amsterdam appeal court has rejected this. The link to the photos does not constitute making them known to the public and therefore does not infringe copyright, the appeal court has ruled. On the other hand, the placing of a cutting from one of the photos did constitute such an infringement. Geenstijl.nl therefore has to pay damages to Dekker and Sanoma, the amount of which still has to be determined. |