Principles of the Digital Services Act (OUP 2024)
Numerous questions were at the heart of parliamentary discussions over the provisions of the Digital Services Act (DSA), the EU’s new regulatory framework for digital services. How should liberal democracies prevent illegal and harmful activities online and protect fundamental rights? How should digital service providers assess the impact of their technology on others? And how should technology companies moderate user-generated content? Principles of the Digital Services Act analyses the DSA’s key provisions, dissecting its mechanisms and components, to understand the new law’s likely impact on digital services in Europe and beyond.
The book puts the new legal framework into its political, economic, and social contexts by explaining its grounding within the frameworks of economic regulation and human rights. It examines the European legislature’s approach to the DSA, offering a detailed historical account of the legislative and pre-legislative process. The book argues that the envisaged regulatory system has the potential to boost trust in the digital environment. However, its mechanisms must be able to rely on the robust network of civil society organisations and the regulators should follow a set of principles. In this way, the DSA’s goal can be achieved through means that are firmly aligned with respect for individual liberties, including the freedom of expression.
Combining academic research with practical insights, Principles of the Digital Services Act offers a robust analysis into how to apply and further develop the most important tools of the DSA to rebuild trust in the digital environment.
Injunctions in Patent Law: Trans-Atlantic Dialogues on Flexibility and Tailoring (Cambridge University Press, 2022) edited by Martin Husovec and Jorge L. Contreras
Patents are important tools for innovation policy. They incentivize the creation and dissemination of new technical solutions and help to disclose their working to the public in exchange for limited exclusivity. Injunctions are important tools of their enforcement. Much has been written about different aspects of the patent system, but the issue of injunctions is largely neglected in the comparative legal literature. This book explains how the drafting, tailoring and enforcement of injunctions in patent law works in several leading jurisdictions: Europe, the United States, Canada, and Israel. The chapters provide in-depth explanation of how and why national judges provide for or reject flexibility and tailoring of injunctive relief. With its transatlantic and intra- European comparisons, as well as a policy and theoretical synthesis, this is the most comprehensive overview available for practicing attorneys and scholars in patent law.
Injunctions against Intermediaries in the European Union: Accountable but Not Liable? (CUP 2017)
In the European Union, courts have been expanding the enforcement of intellectual property rights by employing injunctions to compel intermediaries to provide assistance, despite no allegation of wrongdoing against these parties. These prospective injunctions, designed to prevent future harm, thus hold parties accountable where no liability exists. Effectively a new type of regulatory tool, these injunctions are distinct from the conventional secondary liability in tort. At present, they can be observed in orders to compel website blocking, content filtering, or disconnection, but going forward, their use is potentially unlimited. This book outlines the paradigmatic shift this entails for the future of the Internet and analyzes the associated legal and economic opportunities and problems.
Liability on the Internet under Czech and Slovak law [Zodpovednosť na internete podľa českého a slovenského práva] (CZ.NIC, 2014)