On July 9, 2026, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) held that a work in the public domain in one member state may be made available online free of charge even if it is still protected by copyright in another member state, provided that the publisher uses “state-of-the art” geo-blocking. The court stated that the possibility that users may circumvent such geo-blocking by using a Virtual Private Network (VPN) is irrelevant to the analysis.Facts of the CaseThe case concerns The Diary of Anne Frank, the famous work Anne Frank wrote as a Jewish girl hiding in the Netherlands from the Nazis during the Holocaust. After Anne died in a concentration camp, her father, Otto Frank, published the diary in 1947....