cearta.ie – Page 2 – the Irish for rights

According to Wikipedia, Betteridge’s law of headlines is an adage that states: “Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no”. That is true of the question in the title to this post: no, Christmas did not come early for NJ commuters who were showered with money last week. The CBS headline tells the story: Armored truck spills cash on N.J. highway, drivers rush to grab dollars and crashes ensue. Of the more than $500,000 that spilled on to the highway, nearly $300,000 remains missing, and the bank and the police want it back. As with overactive ATMs, these flying dollars are not so many early Christmas presents, the bank is entitled to recover them, and retaining them may very well amount to theft. …

Brown J of the Supreme Court of Canada will launch the Palles Society for Private Law in Trinity

5 November, 201820 November, 2018

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| Conferences, Lectures, Papers and Workshops

The Honourable Russell Brown, Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada, will deliver a keynote lecture on the topic of

Indeterminacy in the Duty of Care Analysis

at 6:30pm on Thursday 22 November 2018 in Trinity College Dublin, to launch the Palles Society for Private Law. The lecture will be held in the TRiSS Seminar Room (on the 6th floor of the Arts Block in Trinity (map and directions)); and a reception will follow. The event will be chaired by His Excellency Kevin Vickers, Ambassador of Canada to Ireland. All are welcome to attend, but registration is required.

Christopher Palles (pictured above left) was an unrivalled master of the common law. He was Lord Chief Baron of the Exchequer in Ireland from 1874 until 1916. Professor VTH Delany described him as “the greatest of the Irish judges”.

Justice Russell Brown (pictured above right) has been a puisne justice of the Supreme Court of Canada since 2015. He was a Professor of Law at the University of Alberta before his appointment to the bench. He is the author of Pure Economic Loss in Canadian Negligence Law (LexisNexis Canada, 2011), as well as articles, chapters and essays on tort law, property law and civil justice.…

Female-majority panels in the Irish Supreme Court (updated)

4 October, 201828 July, 2019

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| Irish Supreme Court

There was some chatter online yesterday about the fact that the UK Supreme Court sat for the first time with a 3-2 female-male majority. The Supreme Court of New Zealand had done so last year. Despite the complement of female justices over the last 20 years, the Supreme Court of Canada doesn’t seem to have had a female majority panel yet. And there haven’t been sufficient female justices on the High Court of Australia for it to have happened there. Against that backdrop, I thought I’d find out if and when the Irish Supreme Court had first sat with female majority panels, and this is what I found.

The first majority female panel in the Irish Supreme Court happened more than EIGHTEEN years ago. Denham J was the first woman appointed to the Supreme Court, in 1992; McGuinness J was the second, in January 2000; and a female 2-1 majority on a 3-judge panel of the Supreme Court happened almost immediately after that appointment, in February 2000. In Dalton v Governor of the Training Unit [2000] IESC 49 (29 February 2000) Denham and McGuinness JJ sat with Hardiman J (the image, above left, is of McGuinness J (left) and Denham J (right)).…

Digital deposit and harvesting the .ie domain

3 October, 2018

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| Copyright

I have written several times on this blog about the importance of digital deposit (here, here, here, here). Section 198 of the Copyright and Related Rights (also here) provides for the delivery of print publications by publishers to libraries specified in the Act. Under this copyright deposit or legal deposit obligation, several libraries are entitled to copies of books published in the State. However, in Ireland this obligation applies only to print publications. In many jurisdictions, this obligation has been extended to cover electronic publications and websites. With the rise of digital publishing, it is increasingly being recognised that print deposit is incomplete, and that a comprehensive preservation of a nation’s published heritage requires that copyright deposit should extend to online publications as well. Moreover, online material is disappearing at frightening pace. Hence, the Copyright Review Committee, in the Modernising Copyright Report, recommended adding a new section in the 2000 Act to extend the existing copyright deposit regime for print publication in section 198 to digital works, and to permit copyright deposit institutions to harvest the .ie domain.

After much to-ing and fro-ing charted in the earlier blogposts, section 27 of the Copyright and Other Intellectual Property Law Provisions Bill 2018 (as initiated; pdf), in a much less comprehensive provision than that recommended by the CRC, provided for a limited form of digital deposit.…

How to amend the Copyright Bill so that format-shifting and backing-up do infringe copyright

3 October, 20183 October, 2018

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| Copyright, CRC12 / CRC13

As I explained in my previous post, as the law currently stands, format-shifting and backing-up can infringe copyright. But there is no good reason why this must be so. And the Copyright and Other Intellectual Property Law Provisions Bill 2018 currently pending before the Seanad provides a golden opportunity to put things right.

The main legislation relating to copyright at Irish law is the Copyright and Related Rights Act, 2000 (also here). It is the Principal Act for the purposes of the Copyright and Other Intellectual Property Law Provisions Bill 2018. The aim of that Bill, as described in its long title is to amend the Principal Act

… to take account of certain recommendations for amendments to that Act contained in the Report of the Copyright Review Committee entitled “Modernising Copyright” published by that Committee in October 2013 and also to take account of certain exceptions to copyright permitted by Directive 2001/29/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 22 May 20011 on the harmonisation of certain aspects of copyright and related rights in the information society; …

Senators David Norris, Victor Boyhan, Fintan Warfield, Ivana Bacik, Kevin Humphreys, Ged Nash, and Aodhán Ó Ríordáin have proposed amendments to the Bill to permit format-shifting and backing-up.…

Copyright law must be made fit for the digital age: the Seanad must adopt amendments to the Copyright Bill so that consumers do not unknowingly infringe copyright

3 October, 20183 October, 2018

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| Copyright, CRC12 / CRC13

Have you ever transferred music from one device to another? Have you copied music from a CD to your phone to listen to it on the way to work? Have you copied a DVD to a tablet to watch it on a long journey? If so, you have probably infringed copyright, almost certainly without realizing it.

Have you every backed-up the data on your phone, or your laptop? Of course, most of us don’t back-up as often as we should; but, if you do, then you have probably infringed copyright, again almost certainly without realizing it.

Moving data from one format or device to another is known as format-shifting, and both it and backing-up mean that you are making copies of the relevant content or data. Making those copies is an infringement of copyright, unless you have the permission of the copyright owner (which usually you won’t have), or you can rely on a copyright exception provided by copyright legislation (which right now, in Ireland, you can’t).

There is no good reason why format-shifting or backing-up should be an infringement of copyright. And there are many good reasons why it should not. In particular, the fact that you didn’t realize that format-shifting or backing-up are infringements of copyright demonstrates that consumers assume that format-shifting and backing-up are perfectly normal behaviour.…

Reputation as Property

31 August, 2018

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| General

This is a call for papers for a conference on Reputation as Property: Perspectives from Tort and Property, to be held on 18-19 January 2019 in Trinity College Dublin:

How can tort law account for the harm of defamation? One answer to this question is to argue that our reputation is or is like property. While this analogy may make sense to tort law theorists, particularly those seeking to give an internal account of tort law, it may not make sense to property theorists. In addition, it is not clear whether this approach fits with the case law. Whether or not thinking about reputation as property makes sense raises the question of whether tort law theory understands property differently than property theory does. It also raises the question of whether the theory of the tort of defamation fits the case law. In what ways does it make sense to think about reputation as property, and in what ways does it not?

In this workshop, organised in association with the Private Law Group at Trinity College Dublin, we seek to bring together property and torts scholars to discuss both theoretical and doctrinal approaches to the question of whether reputation is property or not.

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