On copyright levies, printers, plotters and personal computers (VG Wort v Kyocera and others)

VG Wort v Kyocera is the most recent chapter in the Court of Justice’s effort to make sense of the Copyright Directive’s provisions on the private copying exception and the levies applicable for unauthorized acts of reproduction by end-users. In a context where over EUR 600 million of levies are collect in the EU every year and the Commission has failed on repeated promises to propose legislation, the Court provided interpretation on key controversial issues. Unfortunately, as sometimes happens in the copyright field, the end result of this judgement may have done more harm than good, especially from a consumer perspective.