Private International Law Aspects of Authors' Contracts: The Dutch and French Examples

Copyright generally vests in the author, the human creator of the work. But because, at least until recently, most authors have been ill-equipped to commercialize and disseminate their works on their own, the author has granted rights to intermediaries to market her works. Since most authors are the weaker parties to publishing, production, or distribution contracts, the resulting deal may favor the interests of the intermediary to the detriment of the author’s interests. Many national copyright laws have introduced a variety of corrective measures, from the very first copyright act, the 1710... Mehr ...

Verfasser: Ginsburg, Jane C.
Sirinelli, Pierre
Dokumenttyp: Text
Erscheinungsdatum: 2015
Verlag/Hrsg.: Scholarship Archive
Schlagwörter: private international law / international law / copyright / copyright law / copyright-contract law / Columbia Journal of Law and the Arts / Contracts / Intellectual Property Law / Law
Sprache: unknown
Permalink: https://search.fid-benelux.de/Record/base-26619836
Datenquelle: BASE; Originalkatalog
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Link(s) : https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/faculty_scholarship/1944

Copyright generally vests in the author, the human creator of the work. But because, at least until recently, most authors have been ill-equipped to commercialize and disseminate their works on their own, the author has granted rights to intermediaries to market her works. Since most authors are the weaker parties to publishing, production, or distribution contracts, the resulting deal may favor the interests of the intermediary to the detriment of the author’s interests. Many national copyright laws have introduced a variety of corrective measures, from the very first copyright act, the 1710 British Statute of Anne, which instituted the author’s reversion right (still in force, albeit much modified, in U.S. copyright law), to detailed limitations on the form and scope of grants found in many continental European copyright laws. Recently, the Netherlands and France have amended their copyright laws to reinforce author-protective provisions; the French reforms particularly envision the publishing contract in the digital environment. But many author contracts, especially in the digital environment, grant rights for multiple territories: how does the international dimension of these agreements affect the practical ability of individual countries to regulate authors’ contracts with respect to exploitations occurring within their borders? If, on the one hand, “lawmakers tend to be provincial in developing copyright-contract rules, remaining focused on largely local parties and interests rather than on policies common to many jurisdictions,” and, on the other, general principles of private international law leave to the parties the determination of the law applicable to their contract, may the parties simply avoid “provincial” protections of authors’ economic interests by choosing (or the stronger party imposing) the law of a less author-interventionist jurisdiction to govern the full territorial extent of the transfer? This Article will first discuss two examples of reforms of copyright-contract law, then will ...