| Abstract [eng] |
Collision of Competition Law and Intellectual Property Rights: Problematic Aspects of Exclusive Broadcasting Licenses On 6 May 2015, the Commission adopted the Digital Single Market Strategy (hereinafter – Strategy), aimed at ensuring customers’ access to copyright content within the European Union, irrespective of national borders of Member States. The Commission has reasoned that the current barriers to free movement of services in digital area are predetermined by the territorial nature of copyright, as well as by private interests of the parties concerned. Thus the Commission has expressed its readiness to implement the Strategy balancing the need to modify copyright rules with the application of competition rules. Nevertheless, the competition law's intervention and the recognition of restrictive agreements as per se unlawful (i. e. having as their object the restriction of competition), started prior to the implementation of the Strategy’s legal reforms, presuppose that competition rules are de facto being used as ex ante legal measures, employed by the Commission in order to narrow the subject matter of copyrights guaranteed by the European Union law. The abovementioned rationale has raised a conceptual question whether the application of competition rules to restrictive agreements, falling within the ambit of copyright, is the most appropriate measure to solve the problems of the Digital Single Market. The analysis needed to answer this question has been conducted in two main chapters of this Master Thesis. The first chapter is concerned with examining the economic (i. e. private) and legal reasons behind the notion of territory-by-territory licensing, as well as with evaluating identifying the possible legal reforms that may be taken in the process of implementing the Strategy. The second chapter contains the analysis on the application of Article 101(1) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union to the copyright licensing agreements. The historical method has been employed in order to examine whether, in accordance with the case law of the Court of Justice of the European Union, the restrictions, having copyright as their specific subject matter, can be held to restrict competition by object. After drawing the conclusions on the subject matter of conducted analysis, the author presents his personal stance on the conceptual issue raised by the Thesis and his recommendations on the legal reforms, which would provide balance between the aim of having the Digital Single Market and that of copyright protection. |
