Directive 2019/790/EU (directive on copyright and related rights in the Digital Single Market)

Copyright's place within European Union (EU) law and within the wider e-Commerce environment is undoubtedly significant. Nonetheless, copyright law is less well integrated into the EU legal order than some other key areas of commercial and e-Commerce law, such as competition law. It is noteworthy that copyright went unmentioned in the foundational Treaty of Rome, which was instead focused on eliminating barriers to competition. Even today EU intellectual property law is harmonized unevenly – for example, copyright law not as fully integrated into EU law than trade mark law is. Rather than full harmonization of EU copyright law there exists a scattered list of Directives and Regulations relevant to copyright. The most prominent include the Information Society (InfoSoc) Directive from 2001 (covered in Chapter 3) and the Copyright in the Digital Single Market (CDSM) Directive, brought into law in 2019, which forms the subject of this chapter.