Court confirms its reading of « communication to the public »

Hyperlinks case

The Court of Justice settled this case quickly by issuing an order. Indeed, the same question for a preliminary ruling had already been submitted to it, to which the court gave the same answer. The previous case to which the Luxembourg judges referred was between journalists and a Swedish firm, Retriever Sverige, which provides its customers with clickable links to articles published elsewhere on the internet. In that case, the judges held that the links were also there to serve public access to information if the information in question is freely accessible elsewhere on the internet.