Author: Pamela Samuelson
Abstract: Over the past several decades, EU and US intellectual property (IP) rules have generally been on convergent paths, especially in their efforts to adapt copyright law to deal with challenges posed by advanced information technologies. The EU’s recently adopted Directive on Copyright for the Digital Single Market (DSM) represents a sharp break from this overall trend. While some EU policy makers may be expecting the US to follow the EU’s lead and adopt laws and policies to mirror its recent initiative, this is unlikely because of profound differences in the legal cultures of the US and EU as well as the perspectives of their respective industries and policy makers about disruptive technologies. However well-intentioned the DSM Directive may be, there are reasons to doubt that it will achieve the desired result of either reducing online copyright infringements or bringing very substantial revenues into the coffers of European content providers to fill the so-called “value gap” that the DSM Directive was intended to address.
Citation: Samuelson, Pamela, Regulating Technology Through Copyright Law: A Comparative Perspective (March 10, 2020). 42 European Intellectual Property Review (2020), Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3635094
