Enforcement, on the record.
What moved in takedowns, brand protection and platform policy — with counsel’s note on what it means for brand owners.
- One Malta court, all 27 EU states: Spribe gets EU-wide injunction against Aviator Studio Malta's Civil Court ordered three Aviator Studio companies to stop using Aviator branding across the entire EU — an ex parte provisional injunction issued 1 September over Spribe's EU trademarks. One filing, 27 member states: how EU trademark enforcement concentrates force. Courts
- CJEU: a Facebook post is a copyright work — length and platform are irrelevant In C-598/24 Gândul Media Network the CJEU held that a text posted on a social network qualifies as a copyright work if it reflects the author's free and creative choices — its short length, online publication and lack of artistic character are all irrelevant to protection. Courts
- Chile turns mirror blocking into a standing pipeline: 42 gambling domains ordered blocked in 48 hours Subtel instructed Chile's six main ISPs to DNS-block 42 gambling URLs within 48 hours, under a court-ratified procedure that rolls on to new mirror domains as they appear. We read the list: five brands appear twice, and several entries are numbered mutations of known brands. Regulation
- ChatGPT, Reddit and Roblox are now VLOPs — brand owners get DSA leverage on three new platforms The European Commission designated ChatGPT a VLOSE and Reddit and Roblox VLOPs on 31 August 2026. By January 2027 all three carry heightened DSA duties — and brand owners gain notice-and-action and trusted-flagger leverage where clones and scams live. Regulation
- Google switches off site reputation penalties in the EEA — parasite SEO keeps its rankings in Europe From 30 August, manual actions under Google's site reputation policy no longer affect search results shown in the EEA. A DMA concession with a direct cost for brand owners fighting parasite SEO in Europe. Platforms
- UKGC suspends two operators mid-season — licences frozen on suspected AML and social responsibility failings The Gambling Commission suspended BresBet Ltd and Bet St George Ltd on 28 August 2026, pending a section 116 review over suspected social responsibility and AML failings. What a suspension actually does — and what operators should take from it. Regulation
- Take-Two is unmasking the GTA 6 leaker with §512(h) subpoenas — four in two days Four DMCA subpoena petitions in the S.D.N.Y. (20–21 Aug 2026) target Discord, Microsoft, X and Google records tied to the Cyberleek GTA 6 leak. What §512(h) can and cannot deliver for rights holders. Courts
- Nintendo cleared 400+ Switch-emulator repos off GitHub in one day — with seven notices Seven §1201 anti-circumvention notices filed 17 August 2026 took down 403 GitHub repositories — whole fork networks at once. The mechanics any rights-holder can reuse. Platforms
- Search ads impersonating billers just cost Doxo $2.1m — and handed brands a prohibition list worth citing The FTC filed a stipulated order in FTC v. Doxo (No. 2:24-cv-00569, W.D. Wash.) on 17 August 2026: $2.1m in consumer redress for search ads posing as consumers' billers, plus itemised bans on biller names, logos and web addresses in ads. What the 28-month docket teaches brand owners. Scam watch
- Romania blacklisted 808 gambling domains in one session — we counted, and it is nine operators One ONJN Supervisory Committee session on 30 July 2026 produced two blacklist decisions covering 808 domains. We counted the annexes: 99% of them are numbered rotation ranges off nine brand strings. ISPs have 15 days to redirect them to a single IP. Regulation
- Paris ordered DNS resolvers, VPNs and search engines to block 73 domains — under a statute brand owners cannot use Fourteen orders of the Tribunal judiciaire de Paris (RG 26/08356–26/08401, 17 July 2026) put Canal+ blocks on ISPs, Cloudflare, Google Public DNS, Quad9, DNS4EU, three VPN operators, Google Search and Bing. The reasoning reaches any intermediary — the statute behind it does not reach brand owners. Courts
- Hundreds of scam PDFs are ranking from the European Space Agency's own domain — and Google is quoting them back ESA's Cosmos portal is serving hundreds of spam PDFs pushing pirate IPTV and free-Robux generators from cosmos.esa.int URLs — three still answered HTTP 200 on 4 August 2026, and Google's AI Overview has relayed their rankings as ESA's. Google calls that hacked content, not site reputation abuse. Scam watch
- Munich held Suno liable for what its model produced — and reached the US training that built it LG München I, 31 July 2026: Suno infringed six GEMA compositions. Memorisation in model parameters is reproduction, outside the § 44b TDM exception; outputs infringe because the originals stay recognisable; the injunction reaches training done in the US. The provider is liable, not the prompter. Courts
- Operation Offsides seized 1,000+ domains — then its own director said that doesn't dismantle the business DOJ announced 1,000+ World Cup streaming domains seized across three actions on EDVA warrants. Eleven days later the MPA and the IPR Center's own director co-signed an op-ed conceding a takedown does not dismantle the business — and asked Congress for judicial site blocking. Regulation
- Delhi High Court blocks 30 pirate operations for HBO — and redraws who decides what gets blocked next CS(COMM) 740/2026 grants HBO an ad-interim block across 30 rogue-site operations, then limits the dynamic extension: registrars and ISPs verify mirror identity only, rights-holders carry the affidavit — and the risk of getting it wrong. Courts
- Live! Casino says its vendor cleared the Louis Vuitton lookalike bags — and sues to move the bill Louis Vuitton claims a Maryland casino handed out counterfeit monogram bags in a loyalty promo; the casino is now suing the promotional supplier that sold them. What the chain says about promo merchandise risk for regulated brands. Courts
- Backdated Facebook posts are powering fake copyright strikes — creators drag Meta to Delhi High Court Scammers swap old Facebook posts’ attachments for stolen videos, keep the original date, and file “older-than-yours” copyright strikes. Delhi High Court is examining the racket — what brand owners should check in their own rights tooling. Scam watch
- Federal Circuit ends the Intellectual Pixels v. Sony cloud-gaming patent fight All twelve claims of the ’109 patent — server-rendered frames streamed to thin clients — held obvious over 1990s server-gaming art. What the decision signals to studios facing streaming-patent demands. Courts