http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-15959882
Following the YouTube decision in 2010 that gave copyright owners the ability to demand that infringing works be taken down from intermediate sites (so long as the copyright owner found each specific instance of infringement and requested it by address), this Chanel case seems to follow suit.
Rights-holders must assert their rights in order to gain the benfits of any legal protection they may have, but courts in the US are struggling to balance how to make the system efficient and fair. It may be an undue burden, as the court found in YouTube, to hold the ISP responsible for material posted by a user that may or may not infringe the rights of some other third party unless they are given specific notice. But the Chanel court went way to the other extreme, going so far as not only blocking the commerce from the website, but ordering GoDaddy to take over the websites selling infringing products and post an "outline of the case" in its place. This unorthodox remedy could pave the way for more website takeovers.
Each case should be decided by the facts within it -- perhaps the company selling infringing Chanel products behaved particularly badly. But it's hard to imagine more damning evidence than the "smoking gun" emails found in the YouTube case, and YouTube did not get nailed for inequitable conduct there. It seems that, at least regarding fake high-end branded products, ownership is on the rise.
Following the YouTube decision in 2010 that gave copyright owners the ability to demand that infringing works be taken down from intermediate sites (so long as the copyright owner found each specific instance of infringement and requested it by address), this Chanel case seems to follow suit.
Rights-holders must assert their rights in order to gain the benfits of any legal protection they may have, but courts in the US are struggling to balance how to make the system efficient and fair. It may be an undue burden, as the court found in YouTube, to hold the ISP responsible for material posted by a user that may or may not infringe the rights of some other third party unless they are given specific notice. But the Chanel court went way to the other extreme, going so far as not only blocking the commerce from the website, but ordering GoDaddy to take over the websites selling infringing products and post an "outline of the case" in its place. This unorthodox remedy could pave the way for more website takeovers.
Each case should be decided by the facts within it -- perhaps the company selling infringing Chanel products behaved particularly badly. But it's hard to imagine more damning evidence than the "smoking gun" emails found in the YouTube case, and YouTube did not get nailed for inequitable conduct there. It seems that, at least regarding fake high-end branded products, ownership is on the rise.
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