On August 3, 2014, the European Court of Justice ("ECJ") issued a judgment in response to a request from the Hof van Beroep te Brussel ("Court of Appeal, Brussels") for a preliminary ruling on three questions regarding the scope of a "parody" as articulated in article 5, par. 3, sub k, of Directive 2001/29/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 22 May 2001 on the harmonization of certain aspects of copyright and related rights in the information society (the "InfoSoc Directive").
Under the InfoSoc Directive, Member States are allowed to exempt a party from obtaining an author's consent for the use of the author's work, under the condition the work is used for the purpose of caricature, parody or pastiche. Belgium has decided to allow such exception, which can be found in article 22, §1, 6° Law of June 30, 1994, on Copyright and Neighboring Rights, as amended by the Law of April 3, 1995 ("Belgian Copyright Act" or "BCA").
