Category Archives: European Private Law
Patrick Parenteau, ‘SLAPP vs SLAPP-BACK: The Seismic Greenpeace Verdict and the Future of Environmental Protests’
ABSTRACT In March 2025, a nine-person jury in Morton County, North Dakota awarded a verdict of almost $667M against Greenpeace USA, Greenpeace Foundation and Greenpeace International (hereafter, Greenpeace unless otherwise noted) and in favor of Energy Transfer LP and Dakota Access LLC, developers of the controversial Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL). Despite Greenpeace’s claim that the […]
Kilpatrick and Scott, ‘Is the EU’s Turn to Sustainable Supply Chains Neo-Colonialist?’
ABSTRACT Our analysis investigates the EU’s new family of sustainable supply chain instruments by analysing their neo-colonial nature when juxtaposed with modern European colonialism. While modern European colonialism was marked by the intensive extraction of natural resources, environmental conservation was also a key feature. Such conservation was frequently exclusionary, depriving local people of access to […]
Bohdan Widła, ‘Can Software Copyright in the EU Survive the End of Programming?’
ABSTRACT This article examines whether, and with what ramifications, a future in which generative artificial intelligence becomes a new ‘layer of abstraction’ in software development could make copyright protection of computer programs under Directive 2009/24/EC (Software Directive) practically unreliable. Drawing on European Union and national case law, it argues that concepts used in the Software […]
Deimantė Rimkutė, ‘The Regulatory Function of the New Product Liability Directive’
ABSTRACT The year 2024 marked a turning point for EU delict law, as the EU adopted a new Product Liability Directive to replace its 1985 predecessor. The new Directive, however, does more than modernise product liability law. It also reflects a deeper shift in how the EU uses private law as a tool of governance. […]
Tamiko Rochelle Franklin, ‘Virtualism: Virtual Property as Economic Rights in Data and its Use by Artificial Intelligence Products and Systems’
ABSTRACT This text proposes the allocation of user centric economic rights in data to counterbalance the adverse human rights impact of transnational artificial persons on humanity; specifically as relates to the use of user data in the development and proliferation of artificial intelligence (AI) products. Internet technology companies are effectively gatekeepers of web use and […]
‘European Society without European Private Law? Public and Private Law Closer Together’
Integration Through Law was and remains, in various forms, the major driver of European integration. Constitutional Pluralism arose out of constitutionalisation, counterbalancing the move to neoliberalism in the new millennium. In Commission v Hungary, the Court recognised European society ‘in which pluralism prevails’ as a legal concept. The Court radiates judicial authority at a time […]
‘Private International Law and European Society’
Can one speak of a European society without speaking about private relations? Recent scholarship on European society has largely approached the concept through the lens of public law. Yet societies are constituted at least as much by the horizontal relations between individuals and groups as by public institutions. In the absence of a comprehensive European […]
Jan van Staalduinen, ‘Is There a Manufacturer in the House? On Contractually Shaping European Product Liability for Co-Created Medical AI’
ABSTRACT Hospital AI applications can be developed in several different ways: they can be developed by an external software development company (SDC), they can be developed internally in the hospital, or a hospital can work together with an SDC to jointly develop an AI application. The chosen arrangement has ramifications for the liability of the […]
Adrian Niewęgłowski, ‘The Status of Animals in Intellectual Property Law: A Theoretical Overview of the Issue’
ABSTRACT Much attention has been devoted to the legal status of animals in property law. Less attention has been paid to the analysis in intellectual property law. This article deals with the latter issue. The legal status of animals can be viewed from many different perspectives. The author first considers whether an animal can be […]
Simon, Krokida and Lapatoura, ‘Gen-AI and Trade Marks: Ascertaining Liability from a UK and EU Perspective’
ABSTRACT Over recent years, generative AI (gen-AI) technology has infiltrated society, from AI text generators being viewed as the evolution of search engines to the ever-increasing AI generation of image and media content by online users. Yet the latter often contains signs that are identical or similar to signs protected as trade marks. This Chapter […]