digital rights management

The advent of affordable high-speed broadband networks means that the internet is a commercially viable distribution platform for music, film and other multimedia content. This, together with the emergence of online file-sharing tools, makes it easy for high-quality copies of multimedia content to be distributed over the web.

As a result, digital rights management (DRM) and other content access control tools are playing an increasingly important role in protecting the legal rights of content owners and allowing them to develop new business models adapted for the digital environment.

Our commercial technology and intellectual property practices have extensive experience of advising content owners on the exploitation, protection and enforcement of their intellectual property rights through the use of DRM and other content access control tools.

Key areas of our expertise include:

Advising on the legal regimes which apply to DRM (and other content access control) tools in the UK and Europe, including the anti-circumvention rules which apply to software programs and other (non-software) content

Advising on the interface between the UK’s anti-circumvention rules, and the statutory exceptions to copyright (reverse-engineering, decompilation, time-shifting, etc)
Drafting and advising on end-user terms accompanying DRM (and other content access control) policies

Our recent experience includes:

Advising a leading technology company on the extent to which they can lawfully decompile software to ensure interoperability with its own products
Acting for a mobile phone manufacturer in relation to circumvention of security firmware and the EU anti-circumvention legislation
Assisting a content provider with DRM software implementation as an essential feature of a new direct download service
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