Latest blog articles

  • 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...

    by:
    in Law
  • 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...

  • 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 Law and Literature (L&L) movement gained momentum in Europe during the past decades, having had so far more exposure on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. L&L offers an open laboratory to create and test knowledge, and the teaching of law should benefit from the genius and creativity of...

  • law_jean_monnet_blog_bruno_de_witte

    Jean Monnet

    Jean Monnet (1888-1979) is, in some ways, an unlikely person to be honoured by having a university hall called after him. Indeed, Monnet left school at the age of sixteen, never obtained a university degree, and indeed never started university studies. He grew up in the city of Cognac as the son of...

  • To get photos of celebrities, paparazzi photographers wait for their targets to end up in the frame. They believe that the minute they released the shutter, the pictures are copyright protected. They don’t know that they might (un)knowingly or (un)intentionally breach someone’s right to privacy.

  • Sometimes cases come along in which several unusual suspects come together. JF v EUCAP Somalia (T-194/20), for which the notification was published last Monday in the Official Journal, is one of them. In this case, a British national’s contract with the Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP)...

    by:
    in Law
  • The rise of e-commerce has resulted in a sharp increase of counterfeit products in the market. The new US Shop Safe Bill introduces liability for online marketplaces, but only in case of counterfeit products that are risky for consumers, which makes this bill a preventive health measure for...

  • The recent verdict (“the PSPP judgment”) of the German Federal Constitutional Court (“FCC”) on the compatibility of the Public Sector Purchase Programme (“the Programme”) under the management of the European Central Bank (“ECB”) has attracted plenty of commentary, much of it critical concerning the...