Balancing intellectual property against data protection: a new right’s wavering weight

Abstract

National authorities that impose the systematic processing of personal data on Internet service providers in the name of the protection of intellectual property do not strike a fair balance between copyright holders' interest in ensuring their right to intellectual property and the right to personal data protection of those affected by such processing. That idea has twice been upheld by the Court of Justice of the European Union (EU), in its judgements of 24 November 2011, in Case C-70/10, Scarlet Extended SA v SABAM, and of 16 February 2012, in Case C?360/10, SABAM v Netlog NV. The postulate, however, is based on an unprecedented understanding of the right to the protection of personal data as an EU fundamental right, and on an innovative approach to balancing that right and any other interests. This paper firstly introduces both the aforementioned judgements. Secondly, it places them in the context of the Luxembourg Court's case law on the protection of personal data, emphasising the institution's infrequent recognition of the existence of an EU right to such protection, as safeguarded by Article 8 of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, and its changing interpretation of the object of EU data protection law. Thirdly, the paper describes the Court's tendency to affirm the need to balance the applicable fundamental rights while deferring responsibility for actually doing so. Against that backdrop, it describes the most striking peculiarities of the aforementioned judgements.