"The Electric Boots” British Library. Public Domain.

In November 2023, the Court of Appeal in THJ v Sheridan offered an important clarification of the originality requirement under UK copyright law, which clears a path for open culture to flourish in the UK.

Kyle believes that “the artistic and creative expressions of humanity is the best way to experience our human efforts” and open GLAM makes this a reality for much more than what you can see on a given day in a museum. Open GLAM also helps drive more digitization of collections around the world in an…

Today, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) delivered its long-awaited and highly anticipated judgment in Case C-401/19. The case addresses the Polish challenge regarding compliance of Article 17 of the 2019 Directive on copyright and related rights in the Digital Single Market 2019/790 (CDSM) with fundamental rights. In short, the court ruled…

Update: On February 7, 2020, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals denied Great Minds’ petition for rehearing (opinion (PDF)). As a result, the decision (PDF) of the panel in favor of CC’s interpretation of the licenses remains final. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit reaffirmed Creative Commons’ interpretation of activities that are permissible under the…

Yesterday we learned that the Tribunal de Bogotá—the Colombian appellate court—has affirmed the lower court’s acquittal of Diego Gómez. Gómez is a scientist from Colombia who has been criminally prosecuted for the last three years for sharing an academic paper online. When Diego was a student in conservation biology in Colombia, he had poor access…

Diego Gómez, the Colombian student who for the last three years has been prosecuted for sharing an academic paper online, has been cleared of criminal charges. The decision was delivered today by a judge in the Bogotá Circuit Criminal Court. In 2014 Diego was a student in conservation and wildlife management, with poor access to…

All six Creative Commons licenses require licensees to attribute the original creator. Although we provide guidelines for attributing a work, we also recognize that standards for how and where licensees should provide attribution vary a lot from medium to medium. That’s why CC licenses allow licensees to fulfill the attribution requirement “…In any reasonable manner…

Litigation involving CC licenses is infrequent even though we’ve been around almost a decade and hundreds of millions of creative works are published under CC licenses. CC believes that this absence of litigation is evidence of widespread acceptance and understandability of our licenses. That said, we still appreciate occasional decisions by courts confirming that CC…

San Francisco, CA, USA — August 13, 2008 The United States Court of Appeals held, in Jacobsen v. Katzer, that “Open Source” or public license licensors are entitled to copyright infringement relief. The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC), the leading intellectual property court in the United States, has upheld a free copyright…

The United States Court of Appeals held that “Open Source” or public license licensors are entitled to copyright infringement relief. The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC), the leading IP court in the United States, has upheld a free copyright license, while explicitly pointing to the work of Creative Commons and others. The…