Latest blog articles

Resilience is a characteristic of codification, since codes tend to change according to time and space: they are far from being eternal or carved in stone. This is evident in Europe, when looking at the recent reforms to the Belgian Civil Code, for example in the area of property law. Resilience is...

(1798-1872). Dutch liberal statesman. Drafted the 1848 revision of the Dutch Constitution that established the parliamentary system.

Back in 2017, the European Court of Justice ruled in Asociación Profesional Elite Taxi v. Uber Systems Spain, SL (Case C-434/15) that Uber offers common transportation services and thus, ought to be regulated as such. Various European national courts subsequently made similar rulings against Uber...

On Friday 31 July, the Cypriot parliament voted against the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) with Canada. This latest development in the ratification process of CETA illustrates perfectly how facultative mixity continuously frustrates our collective interest in seeing the...

The Italian Supreme Court of Cassation sez. I Civile, case n. 10300/20 (registered on May 29th), puts a hold on the proliferation of copyright protection and reasons that technical writings by lawyers - when functional to the provision of typical forensic services - cannot be protected. An attorney...

On 16 July 2020, the Court of Justice (Court) handed down its judgment on the long-anticipated Schrems II case. The saga began with Schrems I case, in which the Court ruled upon an Adequacy Decision, the EU-US Safe Harbour Decision, which aim was to facilitate the transfer of personal data to the...

A few weeks ago, I predicted on this blog that 16 July 2020 would be the most important day of the year, for privacy professionals, because of an expected judgment of the Grand Chamber of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU). And I must say: the Court did not disappoint. 16 July has...

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic is arguably one of the biggest crises of modern times. The conflict between the search for a vaccine, and the artificial scarcity created by patent law, has created a catch-22 situation. How will patent law apply to a vaccine under these circumstances?

During the European Council this week all eyes are, again, on the negotiations for the future European Union (EU) budget. Analysts tended to focus mainly on two things. First, the evolution of the sums of money that will be agreed on for the future European Recovery Plan & next Multi-Annual...

After an exhausting few months in the ‘COVID-19 era’—as we can call it now—after months of hard work and the stress of dealing with a pandemic, everybody is looking to take a break during the summer. But unlike in recent years when we could plan our summer vacation months in advance, this year it...