The UK’s First Tier Tribunal has found that digital versions of The Times and The Sunday Times among other publications by News Corp UK & Ireland cannot not be considered ‘newspapers’ for VAT purposes, and so supplies of digital newspapers cannot be treated as zero-rated supplies of printed newspapers and books under the Value Added Tax Act 1994 (‘VATA’). / read more

The Court of Justice of the European Union (‘CJEU’) has found that the privacy activist, Maximilian Schrems, can take legal action in Austria against Facebook Ireland Ltd (‘Facebook’) in his own capacity, but not on behalf of others. The CJEU found that Mr Schrems was a ‘consumer’ under Article 15 of the Brussels Regulation (44//2001/EC) (‘Regulation’) and therefore had the right to sue Facebook in the country of his domicile (in this case Austria). / read more

The German Federal Court of Justice’s recent judgment clarifies under which conditions a company can obtain a consumer’s valid consent to contact him/her for advertising purposes. A separate declaration of consent for each marketing channel is not necessary in order to meet the requirement of specific consent. / read more

The Court of Appeal has held that the supply of software in the form of a download is not a ‘sale of goods’ for the purposes of the Commercial Agents (Council Directive) Regulations 1993. The Court’s ruling specifically found that commercial agents who sell software that is downloaded rather than supplied on a tangible medium are not entitled to compensation under UK law if the contractual relationship ends. / read more

The UK’s Advertising Standards Authority (‘ASA’) has ruled that a TV advert for Amazon’s smart speaker device - the Echo Dot - was not socially irresponsible. The complaint was brought by an Echo Dot owner, after the ad initiated an order for cat food on his device. However, in its ruling on Amazon Europe Core Sarl1 on 14 February 2018, the ASA found that the order would have been cancelled automatically had it not been expressly cancelled by the complainant. / read more

The Court of Justice of European Union (‘CJEU’) has found in Peugeot Deutschland GmbH v. Deutsche Umwelthilfe eV that a promotional video and the video channel on YouTube for new Peugeot cars at issue in the case were not audiovisual media services within the meaning of the Audiovisual Media Services Directive. / read more

The Court of Justice of the European Union ruled on 20 December 2017 that Uber is a transport service, not an information society service, because of the extent of the control Uber exerts over the service being delivered. The judgment means Uber will have to comply with local transportation laws and regulations, but the Court’s decision may also have a wider impact for Uber in relation to their ongoing court cases elsewhere in the world. / read more

The CJEU found that the VCAST service - which enables users to record television broadcasts and programmes in the cloud using third party cloud storage services - infringes copyright absent rightsowners’ consent. / read more

On 27 June 2017, the European Commission (‘Commission’) imposed a fine of approximately €2.42 billion on Google, Inc. (‘Google’) for the abuse of a dominant market position. The Commission found that Google treated its own comparison shopping service more favourably than competing services. The full decision in this investigation was published in late December 2017. / read more

In legal proceedings initiated by the Football Association Premier League Ltd (‘FAPL’), the Court of The Hague in the Netherlands ruled that service provider Ecatel Ltd must - on a perpetual basis and under pain of a penalty - cease and desist the provision of each service used by third parties to illegally stream Premier League football matches from Ecatel’s servers, within 30 minutes of receiving notification from FAPL identifying an illegal stream. / read more