Category: Uncategorised

International standards and then national laws of the World Trade Organisation are set. The TRIPS Agreement is an Annex of the Marrakesh Agreement Establishing the World Trade Organization, signed in Marrakesh, Morocco, on 15 April 1994.

The author takes no responsibility for the content of this page, which is not intended as binding legal advice. The views are about copyright in the UK Higher Education sector context.

In March 2009, the Waltrop Secondary School in North Rhineland-Westphalia in Germany provided access to a presentation by one of its pupils on its website, which included a photograph taken by Dirk Renckoff, a photographer. The photograph had initially been posted on an online travel portal with no restrictions on the ability to download the photograph, and the Waltrop pupil had downloaded the photograph from this portal and provided a reference to the portal in the presentation.

Although the student included a reference to the travel portal, the photographer sued the city where the school is located for copyright infringement. Renckoff believed he had been given the right to exclusive use of the photograph on the travel portal only. So, using the photograph on the school’s website was an infringement of his copyright (the Land of North-Rhineland-Westphalia was responsible for educational supervision and the employment of the teachers at the school).

The author takes no responsibility for the content of this page, which is not intended as binding legal advice. The views are about copyright in the UK Higher Education sector context.

Several legal debates and court rulings in various geographical jurisdictions have considered whether an exact photographic copy of public domain images would be protected by copyright.

Deliberations have a significant impact on museums and archives that may seek to subsidise their services by selling reproductions of the original work within their collections. Would those reproductions themselves be protected by copyright?

Let’s take an example:  Leonardo Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa. The famous painting is no longer in copyright. The painting is hosted at the Louvre Museum in Paris. Are the posters sold by the museum’s tourist shop covered by copyright?

The crucial point in the discussion is the degree of skills that the ‘copier’ had to apply to create the reproduction.  In other words, how original is it?  If the reproduction required specialised photographic skills, such as reproducing Leonardo’s nuances and effects, avoiding reflections, etc., would the derivative work be protected by copyright? On the other hand, if the Mona Lisa photograph lacked originality, would it not be protected?

Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel Corp., 36 F. Supp. 2d 191 (S.D.N.Y. 1999) was a decision by the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, which ruled that exact photographic copies of public domain images could not be protected by copyright in the United States because the copies lack originality. Even though accurate reproductions might require a great deal of skill, experience, and effort, originality is the key element in determining whether a work is copyrightable under US law. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridgeman_Art_Library_v._Corel_Corp

The author takes no responsibility for the content of this page, which is not intended as binding legal advice. The views are about copyright in the UK Higher Education sector context.

I found an incredible video for my lessons on YouTube. Can I use it?

As with any other copyright material, videos on YouTube can be used either with permission from the copyright owner (usually the creator of the video) or under copyright exceptions. The Standard YouTube Licence only allows users to watch or listen to the content for personal, non-commercial use. However, suppose you want to screen a YouTube video for educational purposes (for example, to prompt a discussion with your students on specific topics). In that case, copyright exceptions are likely to allow this.

Some videos on YouTube are distributed under Creative Commons licences, meaning anyone can reuse them under certain conditions.

Source: Europeana Pro https://pro.europeana.eu/post/exploring-reuse-of-audiovisual-content-for-education?fbclid=IwAR0uUZnmvjRYSR9-ORSpG5v76XDyJ9OVYJKOSGw4we3ugDhpy0RRp-BI5A0

The author takes no responsibility for the content of this page, which is not intended as binding legal advice. The views are about copyright in the UK Higher Education sector context.

Copyright consists of a bundle of economic rights and moral rights.

Unlike economic rights, moral rights cannot be licensed or assigned to another person.

In the UK, moral rights are finite and last only as long as the work is in copyright and can be waived by the author.

Economic rights

• Reproduction right to copy the work
• Distribution right to issue copies of the work to the public
• Rental right to rent or lend the work to the public
• Public performance right to perform, show, or play the work in public
• Communication right to communicate the work to the public
• Adaptation right to adapt the work or do any of the above concerning an adaptation

The economic rights are

• Exclusive: the copyright owners can exclude others from making these uses of their work without permission unless the use is otherwise permitted by law (for example, through exceptions).
• Exhaustive of the distribution right: once a copy of a work is distributed within a territory, the copyright owner of the work cannot control the distribution of that copy any longer

Moral rights

• Right of attribution: the right to be identified as the author of the work
• Right of integrity: the right to object to the derogatory treatment of a work
• Right to object to false attribution of the work
• Right of privacy in privately commissioned photographs and films.

The author takes no responsibility for the content of this page, which is not intended as binding legal advice. The views are about copyright in the UK Higher Education sector context.