The Digital Services Act (DSA) is an ambitious piece of legislation enacted by the EU lawmakers that came into force in late 2022. Some of the provisions of this comprehensive regulation are already applicable and others will become applicable as of 17 February 2024. The DSA fully harmonizes the rules that apply to online intermediary…Continue reading
SaaS agreements – inherent risks and mitigation techniques
Benefits of the SaaS model Under the SaaS delivery model the customer usually saves significant upfront costs. This is due to the fact that the SaaS customer does not need to pay a lump sum for a license or purchase any equipment for hosting the application and it also does not need an internal IT…Continue reading
SaaS Agreements vs Software Licenses – key differences
Over the past decade Software as a Service (SaaS) as a delivery model has been steadily replacing the traditional software licensing model which is characterized with on-premise software deployment. The differences between the two service delivery models are significant. Naturally, this also leads to certain substantial differences in the agreements that regulate the two types…Continue reading
Can you lawfully decompile software without the consent of the rightholder?
Decompilation for interoperability It is well-established that under the EU Software Directive (Directive 2009/24/EC on the legal protection of computer programs), the lawful acquirer of a copy of a computer program is entitled to decompile it for the sake of achieving interoperability with another piece of software. We can define decompilation as a process where…Continue reading
Game engines and the intricacies of their copyright protection
What is a game engine? Nowadays, the underlying source code of a video game is rarely developed from scratch. Modern video games usually rely on middleware. Game engines are such middleware pieces. A game engine can be defined as a platform and framework for game development. In the realm of software development, the notion of…Continue reading
On Perfumes, Copyright and … Cheese
The development of a perfume is undoubtedly a laborious and complex process. Despite the fact that most prominent fragrances are coming under fashion brands, those same fashion houses are rarely deeply involved in the actual creation process. In the usual scenario, a designer brand would commission the development of a perfume with a specified profile…Continue reading
Originality in computer programs
The originality requirement Within the EU, there is only one requirement for obtaining copyright protection for a computer program – the requirement for originality. Article 1 (3) of the EU Directive 2009/24 on the legal protection of computer programs (the Software Directive) reads that “[a] computer program shall be protected if it is original in…Continue reading
The right to erasure, the right to be delisted and the right to be forgotten – clearing the conceptual haze
There are three concepts in EU data privacy law that are quite often conflated and misunderstood. These are: i) the right to erasure, ii) the right to be delisted and iii) the right to be forgotten. The aim of this article would be to establish conceptual clarity about these three notions and to further elucidate…Continue reading
The 6 bases for lawful processing of personal data
One of the key tenets in European data privacy law is the general principle of fair and lawful processing. The principle was initially established in Article 6 a) of the Data Protection Directive of 1995 – “Member States shall provide that personal data must be processed fairly and lawfully”. It was retained and further expanded…Continue reading
The rise of NFTs and their interplay with copyright
The rise of NFTs The rise of NFTs and their recent incursion into mainstream territory reveals just one of the many layers of disruptive potential brought by blockchain technology and smart contracts. In a similar way as “blockchain” and “crypto”, “NFT” is now officially a buzzword with all the implications that this brings in terms…Continue reading
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