AG Szpunar advises CJEU to rule that copyright cannot subsist in military report in important fundamental rights case
Freedom of the press Last year The IPKat reported on two new important referrals to the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) from Germany. One of them, known as the Afghanistan Pap ers case [it is now Funke Medien NRW GmbH v Federal Republic of Germany , C-469/17 ] is asking about the interplay between copyright protection and freedom of expression and freedom of the press. Background The reference was made in the context of litigation between the German Government and German newspaper WAZ over the unauthorized publication by the latter of the so called 'Afghanistan Papers', ie confidential military reports on the operations of German armed forces in that region in the period 2005-2012. The German Federal Court of Justice (BGH) stayed the proceedings, and asked the CJEU to clarify whether and to what extent the assessment of prima facie copyright infringement and the applicability of the exceptions in favour of the press (Article 5(3)(c) of the I...