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Will a Munich Legal Decision Give UMG Leverage Against TikTok?

Will UMG gain leverage against TikTok following a legal decision in Munich about the implementation of the 2019 European Union Directive on Copyright?

At the end of February, TikTok took down every song in which Universal Music Publishing Group owns a share, a complicated step in the escalating showdown between the two companies that started a month earlier during the week before the Grammy Awards. The court essentially ruled that TikTok didn’t make a best effort to negotiate, though, and held the company liable for infringement, with damages to be determined, plus required it to provide information about how many times the content in question was accessed, as well as its resulting revenue and profit. Platforms that make available content uploaded by users have been free to build audiences, and businesses, as long as they have no direct knowledge of infringement and respond promptly to takedown notices filed by copyright holders.

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