The Court of Justice of the European Union has once again ruled on the actual scope of application of the right of communication to the public, as provided for in Article 3 of Directive 2001/29/EC (and, in our legal system, in Article 16 of Law No 633 of 1941).
‘Communication to the public’ presupposes:
- that the protected work is communicated using specific technical means, different from those used up to that point, as in the case where content broadcast via a terrestrial television channel is subsequently rebroadcast on the Internet
- or that the communication is directed at a ‘new public’, that is, an audience not already taken into account by the copyright holders when they authorised the initial communication of their work to the public.
The case most recently examined by the European courts concerned a retirement home for the elderly that permanently accommodated around eighty residents, where the operator simultaneously retransmitted, via cable, television and radio programmes received via its own satellite system to individual rooms and communal areas.
The Court first ruled out the possibility that the retransmission carried out by the retirement home operator constituted a new transmission independent of the original communication (thus highlighting the difference from the case of retransmission of a terrestrial television signal over the internet). Furthermore, it pointed out that the residents of a retirement home for the elderly live there on a permanent basis and, consequently, do not constitute a ‘new audience’, unlike guests at a hotel, clients of a spa or tenants of a property let on a short-term basis for tourist use.
In its judgment of 30 April 2026 (in Case C-127/24), the Court therefore ruled that the simultaneous retransmission by cable, to individual rooms, of programmes received via satellite does not fall within the exclusive right of communication to the public granted to authors of copyright-protected works.
(Fabrizia Serpieri)
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