The EU Court of Justice ruled on Thursday 2 April that by making available to the public vehicles equipped with radio sets, vehicle rental companies are not carrying out a public “act of communication” of protected works (Case C-753/18).
The case was referred by the Swedish Supreme Court, to which two appeals had been submitted to determine, in substance, whether the rental of motor vehicles equipped with radio sets constitutes a communication to the public within the meaning of Copyright Directives 2001/29 and 2006/115.
According to recital 27 of Directive 2001/29, “the mere provision of facilities intended to enable or carry out a communication does not in itself constitute a communication within the meaning of that directive”. The Court of Justice takes the view that this is the case with the provision of a radio integrated into a rented motor vehicle that makes it possible to receive, without any additional intervention on the part of the rental company, the terrestrial radio broadcast accessible in the area in which the vehicle is located. This is therefore different from acts of communication that occur when service providers deliberately transmit protected works to their customers by distributing a signal through receivers they have installed in their establishment, the Court points out.
In its view, therefore, vehicle rental companies are not performing a public “act of communication” of protected works by making vehicles equipped with radio sets available to the public. There is therefore no need to consider whether this availability should be regarded as “public” communication, it concluded.
See the judgment (in French): https://bit.ly/3axRNMB (Original version in French by Camille-Cerise Gessant)