Case Law

The Case Law database is a database of court decisions that discuss or are directly relevant to Creative Commons licenses. The decisions can come from any jurisdiction around the world. It is a database of decisions, not cases. For cases taking place across multiple courts, add separate pages for each decision.

Cases

09-1684-A (Lichôdmapwa v. L'asbl Festival de Theatre de Spa)	Belgian court found a theater company liable for violating the CC BY-NC-ND license on a musical work. (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 Belgium)
Chang v. Virgin Mobile	Flickr photo licensed under CC BY 2.0 unported used in an Australian phone advertisement
Curry v. Audax	Dutch court upheld CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 unported license when Flickr photos were used in a tabloid
Gerlach vs. DVU	German court upheld CC BY-SA 3.0 unported and granted an injunction against improper use of a photo
Internet Brands v. Holliday	Litigation involving ownership of wiki material contributed by a broad community and licensed under CC BY-SA. At no point in either case was the validity of the CC license contested.
Jacobsen v. Katzer	Open source software case involving the Artistic License, involving alleged violation of the license that results in copyright infringement rather than contract violation
No. 71036 N. v. Newspaper	Photographer who used BY-SA licenses on his photographs had some photographs used in a Newspaper. The newspaper did not provide proper attribution. The newspaper had also used Wikipedia text without proper attribution.
SGAE v. Fernandez	Spanish court dismissed suit by a collecting society when bar owner could prove was playing CC licensed music
SGAE v. Luis	Bar claimed to play only CC licensed music but also played non-CC music, found liable for copyright infiringement of non-CC music
TA 3560/09, 3561/09, Avi Re'uveni v. Mapa inc. ישראל: לראשונה, ביהמ"ש אכף רישיון קריאייטיב קומונס	Israeli court found person liable for violating a CC BY-NC-ND license on photos