September 2026

To what extent can the press reproduce and use texts published on social media without the author’s consent?

On 3 September 2026, the Court of Justice of the European Union (“CJEU” or “the Court”) answered that question in Case C-598/24, on a request for a preliminary ruling from Romania’s High Court of Cassation and Justice (“HCCJ”). The judgment closes the loop opened by our earlier article on this case,[1] in which we, BACIU PARTNERS, together with the law firm Turcu & Turcu are assisting the claimant.

This was a ruling the European copyright community had been eagerly waiting for.

Since its referral in September 2024, the case has featured prominently in specialist commentary on the CJEU’s copyright docket, and for good reason:

it is the first time the Court has been called upon to consider, in express terms, whether a written content shared on social media may qualify, for copyright protection purposes, as a “work” and how far the press may go in reproducing it.

Context of the dispute

The facts are straightforward. On 8 September 2021, the claimant, a teacher, reposted on her Facebook page a text she had originally published in 2018, titled “Short guide for parents at the start of the school year”. In essence, the post explained that she did not wish to receive gifts from her pupils’ parents. Six days later, a journalist reproduced the text in its entirety in an article published on the website of the online publication Gândul, without the claimant’s prior consent. The claimant’s name and a hyperlink to the original Facebook post were added only after publication, following the claimant’s objections expressed in the Facebook comments.

The Bucharest Tribunal dismissed her copyright infringement claim in April 2022, holding that the text was not eligible for copyright protection. Further, the Bucharest Court of Appeal upheld that ruling in May 2023, reasoning, in substance, that the text lacked an artistic dimension.

On second appeal, the HCCJ referred two questions to the CJEU: whether such a text is a “work” within the meaning of Article 2(a) of Directive 2001/29/EC (the “Directive”), and whether Article 5(3)(c) of the Directive precludes national legislation, such as the Romanian legislation at issue, permitting the use, for current-events reporting, of only short extracts and only where no direct or indirect commercial or economic advantage is obtained.

The first answer: a social media post can be a work

The Court answered that a social media post can be a copyright protected work and, importantly, did so by returning to the established principles of copyright law, rather than by developing a special regime for online content. A text posted on a social network expressing an opinion on social practices regarded as inappropriate comes within the concept of a “work”, provided it is the expression of an intellectual creation reflecting the personality of its author.

The reasoning restates the two cumulative requirements, well established in its case law since Infopaq and consistently reaffirmed in Levola Hengelo and Cofemel: the subject matter must be original, in the sense that it reflects the author’s personality through free and creative choices, and it must be identifiable with sufficient precision and objectivity.

The Court also referenced Article 2(1) of the Berne Convention, specifically the broad term “other writings” upon concluding, in paragraph 25 of the decision, that for the purposes of classifying a text as a work, its length, the fact that it was posted online, and whether it belongs to a predetermined literary genre are all irrelevant, unless those factors result from rules, technical considerations or constraints that left no room for creative freedom.

Two important consequences follow:

First, the aesthetic or artistic criterion applied by the Bucharest courts has no place in the copyright analysis. The Court did not revisit the principles established in Cofemel; it simply applied them.

Second, somewhat unusually for a preliminary ruling, but in a welcome development, the Court went on to observe that, based on the information provided by the HCCJ and subject to the national court’s further assessment, it appears that in drafting the text at issue the claimant did make free and creative choices, which found concrete expression in a subject matter identifiable with sufficient precision and objectivity.

The second answer: Romania’s exception permitting the use of short extracts for reporting current events is compatible with EU law, whereas the exception only for uses involving no direct or indirect commercial or economic advantage is not.

The Court addressed a preliminary issue raised by the referring court: whether the reproduction by an online newspaper of such a Facebook post could, in principle, fall within the concept of “reporting of current events”. The Court held that this possibility cannot be ruled out. It remains for the national court to determine whether, in the circumstances of the case, the publication in an online newspaper of a text posted on a social media platform by a teacher at the beginning of the school year, expressing an opinion on social practices regarded as inappropriate in the school environment, may constitute the reporting of a current event, namely a matter of informatory interest to the public.

The Court further clarified that the ordinary meaning of “reporting” neither requires the user to provide a detailed analysis nor requires the readers to be invited to react.

The Court then recalled that Article 5(3)(c) and leaves Member States significant discretion, circumscribed in four respects: (i) the limits imposed by EU law and the principle of proportionality; (ii) the duty to preserve the purpose of the Directive; (iii) the three-step test in Article 5(5) requiring that such exceptions apply only in certain special cases, do not conflict with the normal exploitation of the work, and do not unreasonably prejudice the legitimate interests of the rightholder, and (iv) the requirement to comply with the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, which requires Member States to interpret and apply copyright exceptions in a manner that ensures a fair balance between the fundamental rights at stake.

Measured against that framework, the two Romanian conditions fared differently.

The “short extracts” limitation survives. The Directive imposes no formal length limit, but it does require that use be made only to the extent justified by the information purpose, in accordance with the principle of proportionality. Freedom of information and freedom of the press do not, in every case, require publication of a work in its entirety. Thus, the permitted use in relation to extracts of sufficient length does not compromise the effectiveness of the exception. The Court added that except in the case of a very short text where the use of extracts proves impossible, reproduction in full is liable to conflict with the normal exploitation of the work and unreasonably prejudice the author’s legitimate interests, because it substitutes for the original communication and relieves the audience of any need to consult it.

The “no commercial or economic advantage” limitation does not survive. The Court found that the restriction introduced by the Romanian legislation has no basis in Article 5(3)(c); the phrase “to the extent justified by the information purpose” concerns the extent of the use, not the economic context in which it takes place. Media outlets, alongside their function of informing the public and scrutinising public figures, generally also pursue an economic activity inherent to their operation. A broad and undefined exclusion of uses generating any direct or indirect commercial or economic advantage would therefore undermine the effectiveness of the exception and upset the balance that Article 5(3)(c) seeks to achieve between intellectual property protection (Article 17 of the Charter) and freedom of expression and of the press (Article 11 of the Charter).

Key takeaways

For Romanian law, the consequence is precise: the condition in Article 35(2)(c) of Law no. 8/1996 limiting the current-events exception to short extracts is compatible with the Directive, while the requirement that the use produce no direct or indirect commercial or economic advantage is not, and must be disapplied.

For rightholders, media outlets and copyright practitioners, the message is broader. Copyright does not begin and end with traditionally published works such as books or press articles; it also extends to short, informal forms of expression shared online. A text posted on a social media platform must be assessed according to the same objective criteria as any other work, and neither its briefness nor the platform on which it appears can be used to deny protection. At the same time, the press retains a meaningful exception, but one whose limits are defined by the informatory purpose of the use and by the three-step test provided by Article 5(5) of the Directive, not by the mere fact that a work is short enough to be reproduced in full.

The case now returns to the HCCJ. BACIU PARTNERS and Turcu & Turcu will continue to provide representation in the proceedings before the national courts.

[1] Intellectual property rights in the age of social media. CJEU examines Case C-598/24, August 2025, available here.