Lituania / Casos nacionales
UAB Delfi v UAB Vikimedija and VšĮ Debunk EU, civil case e3K-3-158-421/2025
Casos nacionales. La inclusión en esta ficha no convierte una referencia extranjera en una decisión nacional. Se conserva el estado y el alcance de la fuente.
Expediente y fuentes
- Nombre
- UAB Delfi v UAB Vikimedija and VšĮ Debunk EU, civil case e3K-3-158-421/2025
- Cita
- UAB Delfi v UAB Vikimedija and VšĮ Debunk EU, civil case e3K-3-158-421/2025
- Tribunal
- Supreme Court of Lithuania, Civil Division
- Instancia
- última instancia
- Fechas
- Decisión
- 2025-11-13
- Estado
- resuelto-firmeza-no-verificada
- Resultado
- Both lower decisions were vacated and the matter remanded to first instance. The Supreme Court did not declare Delfi the author or finally award all exclusive rights.
- Resumen
- Written-form rules do not make an unsigned copyright contract automatically void. Emails, performance, payment and delivery may prove agreement and must be assessed. Any transfer is construed narrowly to the rights and uses necessary for the contract’s purpose; source-code transfer normally requires explicit treatment.
- Antecedentes
- Delfi’s Google Digital News Initiative project involved a platform for finding and processing disinformation. Vikimedija employees built the programs and source code. The parties exchanged a draft DNI agreement and emails in 2017–2018 but never signed one document; Delfi paid EUR 302,812.18 and used the delivered platform. The dispute concerned exclusive economic rights, source code and open-source licences.
- Historia procesal
- Klaipėda District Court rejected the claim on 7 October 2024; Vilnius Regional Court affirmed on 18 February 2025. Delfi sought cassation.
- Cuestión jurídica
- Whether absence of signatures alone defeated a commissioned-work agreement and what economic rights and source-code delivery obligations could be inferred from the parties’ conduct and contractual purpose.
- Criterio
- Written-form rules do not make an unsigned copyright contract automatically void. Emails, performance, payment and delivery may prove agreement and must be assessed. Any transfer is construed narrowly to the rights and uses necessary for the contract’s purpose; source-code transfer normally requires explicit treatment.
- Fundamento decisivo
- Creation/authorship and downstream economic-right allocation are distinct. The platform was created by Vikimedija employees; commissioning, payment and acceptance may allocate rights only through proved statutory/contractual rules. Neither customer control nor financing is authorship.
- Límites
- Contract and software-rights remand, not a final award of ownership or source code. Payment, commissioning and acceptance may evidence agreement but do not establish customer authorship or protection of autonomous output.
- Relevancia
- doctrina-general
- Referencias relacionadas
- Peso del precedente
- Current national technology/chain-of-title authority. Useful for GenAI commissioning contracts but not authority that software or AI output is authored by the customer. Integración/votación: Donatas Šernas (presiding and rapporteur), Agnė Tikniūtė, Eglė Zemlytė. Three-judge panel; no numerical tally, concurrence or dissent is published.
- Fuente
- Referencia
- UAB Delfi v UAB Vikimedija and VšĮ Debunk EU, civil case e3K-3-158-421/2025
- Enlace
- Consultar fuente
- Autoridad
- Supreme Court of Lithuania, Civil Division
- Tipo
- national software commission and economic-rights cassation; reversal and remand; non-AI
- Localizador
- paras. 31–50 (agreement/form/performance), 51–61 (scope of transfer and source code), operative part
- Verificación documentada
- Sí