New Copyright and IP Bill

June 2018

The recently published Copyright and Other Intellectual Property Law Provisions Bill 2018 (the “Bill”) proposes a raft of far-reaching amendments to the Irish Copyright and Related Rights Act 2000 (the “CRRA”).

The purpose of the Bill is to modernise the copyright regime in Ireland under the CRRA and to afford greater copyright and IP protections to right-holders in the digital era.

Some of the main amendments proposed by the Bill include:

• the extension of the jurisdiction of the Circuit Court and the District Court to facilitate right-holders in bringing lower value IP infringement claims for relief in civil proceedings within the monetary jurisdiction of those Courts
• the extension of the term of copyright in designs from 25 years to the life of the creator plus an additional 70 years
• the extension of fair dealing defence to use of a copyright work in news reporting
• making tampering with metadata associated with photographic works an act of copyright infringement
• the authorship of a soundtrack accompanying a film shall be treated as part of the film
• an exception will be created for text and data mining where it is done for non-commercial research with sufficient acknowledgement; and
• an exception for use of a copyright work for the purposes of caricature, parody or pastiche.

The Bill is currently at second stage before Dáil Éireann and we will keep you updated on its progress.

For more information, please get in touch with your usual Whitney Moore contact, Caroline O’Connor or any member of our Intellectual Property team.