On July 8 2011 the final regulations on the procedure for allocating the internal digital dividend was published in the Official Gazette. The assessment and allocation procedure – or beauty contest – will be held to allocate six digital terrestrial multiplexes to network operators for the purpose of establishing six national digital television networks. The…

Il 1° agosto l’AGCOM ha pubblicato dei Chiarimenti interpretativi sulla trasmissione di film vietati ai minori di anni 18 e 14. L’Autorità è partita dal dato letterale del comma 1 dell’art. 34 del Decreto legislativo 31 luglio 2005, n. 177 (Testo unico dei servizi di media audiovisivi e radiofonici), ribadendo che (i) ai film senza…

On July 8 2011 French dairy company Groupe Lactalis confirmed the acquisition of 83.3% of Parmalat SpA’s stock capital on the conclusion of a !3.4 billion takeover bid. The transaction makes Groupe Lactalis the world leader in dairy products. Following Groupama’s attempted takeover of Premafin, EDF’s interest in Italian Edison and the takeover of Bulgari…

On January 20 2011 the Court of Milan ruled against ItaliaOnline Srl (IOL) for infringement of copyright held by Reti Televisive Italiane SpA (RTI) in respect of television programmes uploaded and displayed on IOL’s online audio and video-sharing platform. The grounds for the decision were published on June 16 2011. The court held that the…

The Supreme Court has declared that in online defamation cases, the competent court is the court of the accused’s place of residence.(1) The decision in question related to a person who was accused of defamation in two different proceedings; one was heard by the Criminal Court of Sassari (ie, the court of the accused’s place…

On April 14 2011 IAB Europe, a body representing the European digital industry, released a Europe-wide self-regulatory framework for online behavioural advertising (OBA). The framework includes best practices for enhancing transparency and greater user control over OBA within the European Economic Area. The OBA framework is the result of a collaboration between IAB Europe and…

Following a recent case involving the search engine Yahoo! Italia, another Italian court has addressed the issue of search engine liability. On March 24 2011 the Court of Milan found Google liable for defamation because its auto-complete suggestions paired the plaintiff’s name with defamatory keywords. The court upheld its earlier interim injunction of January 25…

On May 4 2011, in a ceremony hosted by the European Commission, a representative group of leading rights holders and internet platforms signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on the Sale of Counterfeit Goods over the Internet.[i] The fight against counterfeiting is a key area of EU collaboration, although its methodology remains a subject of…

The impact of data protection law on due diligence is an increasingly important aspect of M&A transactions. Italian law has no specific provisions on data protection in due diligence; nor has the Data Protection Authority issued administrative provisions on the subject. Nevertheless, parties to mergers and acquisitions must think carefully about the data protection aspects…

On February 3 2011 AGCOM, the communications regulator, issued a new regulation on the use of secondary rights acquired by media service providers. Article 44(5) of the Audiovisual Media Services Code acquires transmission...