Copyright law and the freedom of panorama: The right to commercialise photographs of protected works

<p>Making an unauthorised copy of a copyright-protected work is a copyright infringement, as is making an adaptation or a derivative work without gaining prior consent from the author or authors of the copyright-protected work. It was once questioned at one of the Berne Convention amendment meetings whether to take photographs of copyright-protected literary works was to make copies of them. The meeting concluded that taking photographs of literary works meant making copies of them, and, therefore, photographs should not be taken without gaining the prior consent of the author or authors. However, there was no discussion about photographs of other type of works, such as buildings and sculptures. Taking photographs of architectural and sculptural works permanently situated in public places is protected under “freedom of panorama”, a provision of copyright laws that permits the taking of photographs of those works, which is applied differently in some countries. This paper discusses copyright protection for those photographs, though there are not many cases available in this issue as the terminology of “freedom of panorama” was only recently coined. The discussion is based on the Berne Convention, and copyright law in the United States, New Zealand, and Indonesia. Freedom of panorama may seem to limit the exclusive rights for architects and sculptors to authorise any acts to be done over their works. However, photographers also have the need to be sure that their photographs are protected, including photographs that are taken under the freedom of panorama. Therefore, this paper argues that the photographers who take photographs under the freedom of panorama should be able to exercise exclusive and moral rights over their photographs. Although the three countries mentioned provide protection for the “freedom of panorama”, it is protected differently and, therefore, there is a need to include the freedom of panorama in an international copyright treaty to avoid a possible conflict of laws.</p>

Copyright law and the freedom of panorama: The right to commercialise photographs of protected works

<p>Making an unauthorised copy of a copyright-protected work is a copyright infringement, as is making an adaptation or a derivative work without gaining prior consent from the author or authors of the copyright-protected work. It was once questioned at one of the Berne Convention amendment meetings whether to take photographs of copyright-protected literary works was to make copies of them. The meeting concluded that taking photographs of literary works meant making copies of them, and, therefore, photographs should not be taken without gaining the prior consent of the author or authors. However, there was no discussion about photographs of other type of works, such as buildings and sculptures. Taking photographs of architectural and sculptural works permanently situated in public places is protected under “freedom of panorama”, a provision of copyright laws that permits the taking of photographs of those works, which is applied differently in some countries. This paper discusses copyright protection for those photographs, though there are not many cases available in this issue as the terminology of “freedom of panorama” was only recently coined. The discussion is based on the Berne Convention, and copyright law in the United States, New Zealand, and Indonesia. Freedom of panorama may seem to limit the exclusive rights for architects and sculptors to authorise any acts to be done over their works. However, photographers also have the need to be sure that their photographs are protected, including photographs that are taken under the freedom of panorama. Therefore, this paper argues that the photographers who take photographs under the freedom of panorama should be able to exercise exclusive and moral rights over their photographs. Although the three countries mentioned provide protection for the “freedom of panorama”, it is protected differently and, therefore, there is a need to include the freedom of panorama in an international copyright treaty to avoid a possible conflict of laws.</p>

NEEDLETIME: THE LONG AND WINDING ROAD

The article chronicles the long and winding road of the development of rights to royalties for performers from the recognition of a sort of potential right in the Berne Convention, through the different international instruments such as the Rome Convention, the TRIPs Agreement and eventually, for purposes of this article, the most important World Intellectual Property Organisation Performances andPhonograms Treaty (WPPT). It then proceeds to deal with the development of the law relating to performers’ rights in South Africa. It shows that, despite vehement objections from the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB), the Performers’ Protection Act and the Copyright Act were amended in 2002 and through these amendments a legislative framework for the protection of performers in South Africa was established. It concludes that, in spite of these legislative measures, the implementation of needletime has been controversial because of the vastly different interpretations of the empowering legislation. This has resulted in a delay in thepayment of needletime rights which has led to several judicial challenges that once settled, should hopefully bring a measure of legal certainty to this area of law.

The Personality Nexus

This chapter explores the changing legal landscape of moral rights in the context of music creation. It traces moral rights’ roots to the Kantian theory of authors’ personality rights in continental Europe and it also explains common law jurisdictions’ ideological resistance to a freestanding moral right doctrine in favor of a patchwork approach to the issue. It shows that international agreements including the Berne Convention, the WPPT, and the Beijing Treaty, have played different roles in promoting the minimal moral right standard for either music creators or performers at the international level. Furthermore, it should not be ignored that there has always been an unresolved tension between moral rights and the time-honored practice of music parody, because the former might exert a chilling effect on the latter. It is suggested that a reimagination of moral rights through the Kantian communicative authorship is crucial for accommodating parodic expressions in an increasingly reconfigurable music ecosystem.

The polonaise from the film Pan Tadeusz directed by Andrzej Wajda as a choreographic work protected by copyright

Choreographic work was the object of copyright protection under the Berne Convention, as revised at Berlin in 1908, as well as under the historical Polish copyright legislations — the 1926 Act (as an original, “not based on any existing work of art” work of “rhythmic art (choreography)”) and the 1952 Act (as a “work of choreographic art” preserved in “scenarios, drawings or photographs”). It was also included, as a “choreographic work”, in the exemplary catalogue of works protected under the Act of 4 February 1994 on Copyright and Related Rights (“the Copyright Act”), currently in force. The purpose of this paper, due to limited framework, is to analyse some basic concepts related to the conditions that a movement composition shall meet in order to qualify as a choreographic work in the meaning of the Copyright Act. It is shown based on the polonaise from the film Pan Tadeusz, directed by Andrzej Wajda. This choice allows to introduce threads related to folklore as well as the use of unprotected pieces of the public domain in choreographies into the discussion. Moreover, the article briefly presents the correlation between choreographic work and other intellectual works — literary, musical, and audiovisual.

The Interpretations of Exceptions and Limitations Under Vietnamese Copyright Law in Case of Quotation of a Work

The exceptions and limitations in copyright law have been firmly established by the Berne Convention. Indeed, these foundations consolidate and facilitate the unification in protecting copyrights of member states’ domestic laws. Nevertheless, the understanding and interpretations of each member are notably different and inadvertently maintain the inconsistency in international law. On that basis, the article analyzes the practice of Berne Convention’s codification and application in Vietnamese laws and judicial practice. Thereafter, the article emphasizes that Vietnamese intellectual property law has attempted to internalize the Berne Convention’s provisions on the limitations and exceptions of copyright law and proposes solutions to ameliorate such attempts. The article then shows the practice in Vietnamese judgment in order to show how Vietnamese intellectual property law receive the provision of limitations and exceptions in copyright law.

How to manage cultural space: An agonistic analysis of artistic moral rights

This article analyzes the debate between the proponents and opponents of artistic moral rights and, more specifically, the right of integrity as recognized in the Berne Convention, with the aid of agonistic political theory. Envisaging art as a site of antagonistic struggle, the right of integrity is conceived of as a state-backed mandate to claim an inviolable place for artistic work, founded on a Romantic notion of authorship. The plea against the entrenchment of this right is considered a counter-hegemonic response that challenges this notion in favor of an unfettered development of art and its surrounding discourse. As such, this debate seems to revolve around a conflict of alleged interests – those of artists, of art’s public, and of art itself. It is argued that insights into the discursive behavior of rights, and, by extension, into the effect of rights discourses on antagonistic struggle, are needed to foster this debate.

Intellectual Property—Internet Jurisdiction and Applicable Law

Chapter 12 covers jurisdiction and applicable law in respect of internet cases involving intellectual property (IP). It covers both registered rights (eg trademarks, patents, design rights) and unregistered rights (eg passing off, copyright). It incisively discusses the relationship between IP and the territoriality principle, and how the English courts have moved away from the strict territoriality rule in recent years. The chapter discusses the Berne Convention and, within the EU, the Copyright Directive overcoming the strict territoriality of copyright. It includes a discussion of domain names and in rem jurisdiction at the place of registration of the domain name. The chapter then moves to an explanation of the jurisdictional rules in England, as well as the harmonized EU rules in the Brussels Regulation. The chapter analyses in rem, subject-matter jurisdiction and its interplay with personal jurisdiction under the Brussels Regulation and the English Jurisdiction rules. The chapter briefly discusses the jurisdictional provisions in the EU Trademark Regulation, Community Design Regulation, and the European Patent. Finally, it covers the rules on applicable law in the Rome II Regulation and the Berne Convention.

Minimum and Maximum Protection Under International Copyright Treaties

This Comment addresses minimum and maximum substantive international protections set out in the Berne Convention and subsequent multilateral copyright accords. While much scholarship has addressed Berne minima, the maxima have generally received less attention. It first discusses the general structure of the Berne Convention, TRIPS, and the WCT regarding these contours, and then analyzes their application to the recent “press publishers’ right” promulgated in the 2019 EU Digital Single Market Directive.