Law note · European Union
VG Bild-Kunst v Stiftung Preussischer Kulturbesitz
cite Case C-392/19, judgment of 9 March 2021
stage IN FORCE in force since 2021-03-09
The CJEU (Grand Chamber) held that embedding a third-party copyright-protected work via inline framing constitutes a 'communication to the public' under Art. 3(1) of the InfoSoc Directive (and therefore requires authorisation) where the rightsholder has adopted or required technical measures restricting framing.
Although the case concerned thumbnail images rather than news text, it directly constrains news aggregators that display publisher content through iframes or embedded widgets: a rightsholder's machine-readable anti-framing signal (e.g. X-Frame-Options header or technical restriction in licence conditions) must be respected, or the embedding constitutes infringement.
Primary source: EUR-Lex / CURIA