European Union: Digital Single Market Update: Portability Proposal Published

Last week the European Commission edged one step closer to a digital single market with three new developments. This included publication of a proposed Regulation on portable content with the aim to enable consumers to use services they subscribe to in their home member state whilst temporarily staying in another member state. It is anticipated that the regulation will be approved in 2016 and will be in full operation by 2017. The Commission addresses the thorny issue of rights clearance by effectively treating such use as an exercise of rights in the home member state and an activity to be disregarded for rights purposes in the member state where the consumer is temporarily staying.

The Commission also published the Communication "Towards a modern, more European Copyright Framework". This remained largely unchanged from the previous leaked version revealed last month. One specific change however, is that the Commission will consider whether "any specific action to news aggregators is needed, including intervening on rights". In the communication itself, ancillary rights are not discussed, but from the Q&A documents, it can be gathered that the Commission will continue to monitor national systems to decide whether to implement EU wide ancillary right over news content as implemented on a national basis in Spain and Germany. The Commission has announced that "this "political preview" [communication] will be translated into legislative proposals and policy initiatives in the next six months, taking into account all inputs from several public consultations".

Finally, consultation to analyse the legal framework for the enforcement of intellectual property rights has been published. The consultation has been launched with the intention of a revision to the legislation in 2016.

For a more detailed discussion and comments on the digital single market updates, please read our article here.

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