SECTION 4 - EU Directives

Directive 2001/29/EC on the harmonisation of certain aspects of copyright and related rights in the information society entered into force on 22 June 2001 .

Article 13 requires the Directive to be transposed into the national laws of EU Member States before 22 December 2002 .

With this directive, the European Commission attempted to harmonise authors’ rights to control

• Use of their works with respect to reproductions

• communication to the public by electronic means

Article 7

Obligations concerning rights-management information

1. Member States shall provide for adequate legal protection against any person knowingly performing without authority any of the following acts:

   1. the removal or alteration of any electronic rights-management information;
   2. the distribution, importation for distribution, broadcasting, communication or making available to the public of works or other subject-matter protected under this Directive or under Chapter III of Directive 96/9/EC from which electronic rights-management information has been removed or altered without authority, if such person knows, or has reasonable grounds to know, that by so doing he is inducing, enabling, facilitating or concealing an infringement of any copyright or any rights related to copyright as provided by law, or of the sui generis right provided for in Chapter III of Directive 96/9/EC.

2. For the purposes of this Directive, the expression "rights-management information" means any information provided by rightholders which identifies the work or other subject-matter referred to in this Directive or covered by the sui generis right provided for in Chapter III of Directive 96/9/EC, the author or any other rightholder, or information about the terms and conditions of use of the work or other subject-matter, and any numbers or codes that represent such information.

   The first subparagraph shall apply when any of these items of information is associated with a copy of, or appears in connection with the communication to the public of, a work or other subject matter referred to in this Directive or covered by the sui generis right provided for in Chapter III of Directive 96/9/EC.

Directive 96/9/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 11 March 1996 on the protection of databases

 According to Directive, what is protected is the compilation and sorting of the data, not the data per se. The EC copied the rules of the Nordic copyright legislation since 1961 databases have been protected in the Nordic countries.

The duration of protection of the database is 15 years after the production or a substantial update.

The Directive also contains one novelty of great interest to libraries: Article 15 specifies, that contractual agreements which extend the database producers rights beyond the rights granted in the Directive are null and void.

 Council Directive of 29 October 1993 harmonising the term of protection of copyright and certain related rights

 The main rule is that literary and artistic works are protected during the lifetime and 70 years after the death of the author.

 Council Directive 92/100/EEC of 19 November 1992 on rental right and lending right and on certain rights related to copyright in the field of intellectual property

 The Lending Directive specifies the terms for public lending. Traditionally in copyright the so-called “distribution right” is “exhausted” when the book is put for sale. The Article 1(4) of the Directive sating that the authors right to control distribution in the form of rental or lending of copies of their works, is not exhausted when the work is sold or distributed. Members states are, however, free to restrict authors rights provided authors are remunerated.

References

Hielmcrone, Harald von, 2002. The Development of Copyright within the European Union. In: “Managing Resources in a sea of change: Proceeding of the 27 th Annual Conference of the IAMSLIC and the 9 th Conference of the EURASLIC”, J.W. Markham, D.J. Hyett and A.L.Duda (eds), pp. 127-143.

http://europa.eu.int/smartapi/cgi/sga_doc?smartapi!celexapi!prod!CELEXnumdoc&lg=EN&numdoc=32001L0029&model=guichett

The information on this site is subject to a disclaimer and a copyright notice