Suchergebnisse

Thorvald Solberg was the first and longest serving Register of Copyrights. He seems inspired in his portrait, and for good reason. Solberg was a visionary leader, a champion of authors' rights, and an early advocate for the United States' adherence to the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works ("Berne Convention"). Under his care, the Copyright Office grew from a handful of employees to more than one hundred professional staff and took on the many roles that are still critical to the mission of the Office today. Solberg and his team administered the copyright registration system, managed the public records of copyright information, facilitated the delivery of books and other copyright deposits to the Library of Congress (the "Library"), served as substantive experts within the U.S. government, provided policy advice to Congress, and represented the United States at international meetings. He was Register during the revision process that led to the 1909 Act, in which copyright term was extended to a total period of fifty-six years subject to renewal registration, but he broached the subject of automatic protection as early as the 1920s.

The passage of the 1909 U.S. Copyright Act was embedded in a significant period of evolution for international copyright law. Just a year before, the Berne Convention had been revised for the second time. This Berlin (1908) Act of the Convention in remembered in particular for the introduction of a broad prohibition against formalities concerning the "exercise and enjoyment" of copyright. 1909 was also just one year before a new copyright bill was brought before the Brit-ish Parliament. This Copyright Act, finally adopted in December 1911 and which entered into force in July 1, 1912, greatly influenced laws in many countries, including Australia, Canada, Israel, New Zealand, Nigeria, and South Africa. In this Essay, I situate the Berlin Act within the framework of the evolution of the Berne Convention from 1886 until the current 1971 Act and explore the role played by the United States, not as much as a participant in the Berlin Conference but by the way its actions influenced the actions of others. To this end, I discuss sequentially the emergence and evolution of the Berne Convention, and then two areas worthy of deeper analyses when considered against the back-drop of the 1909 Act, namely the prohibition against formalities and the rule imposing retroactive application of the Convention.

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) is an extremely complex piece of legislation that makes major changes to U.S. Copyright Law, specifically in the digital networked environment. Many legal and practical issues are addressed in this legislation that have an enormous impact on the library community. This session will outline the key issues for libraries and alert serialists to the issues that directly or indirectly affect their work. Whether we are concerned with access, delivery, preservation, or archiving, the DMCA affects what we do on a daily basis. In the near future, as the law is being applied and tested in court, libraries must actively identify its impact on their mission and goals, and work to assure proper protection under the law.

The bestseller clause of the Copyright Act is an older legal institution of Hungarian copyright law. The rule was taken over by Hungarian law from the German Copyright Act. The bestseller clause provides protection for a creator in a weaker contractual position than the user. It provides effective assistance for the subsequent consideration of unforeseen circumstances at the time of the conclusion of the contract. Its primary purpose is to remedy the post-contractual shift in value using the special means of judicial amendment of the contract.The legal institution of the bestseller clause is a special regulatory solution compared to the provisions of the Civil Code on invalidity. It is a special provision compared to invalidity in the event of a significant difference in value, however, it provides a strong limitation on the legal consequences of invalidity.It only provides an opportunity for the court to amend the contract and eliminate the striking difference in value.The rule has very poor judicial practice, both in Hungary and abroad. The primary reason for this is that the parties apply contractual arrangements that avoid future uncertainties regarding the amount of the royalty.One of the aims of the DSM Directive is to extend the legal opportunities for weaker contracting parties, including the EU-level harmonization of the bestseller clause. According to Article 20 DSM, Member States shall ensure that in the absence of an applicable collective bargaining agreement providing for a mechanism comparable to that set out in this Article, authors and performers or their representatives are entitled to claim additional, appropriateand fair remuneration from the party with whom they entered into a contract for the exploitation of their rights, or from the successors in title of such party, when the remuneration originally agreed on turns out to be disproportionately low compared to all the subsequent relevant revenues derived from the exploitation of the works or performances. The essay examines the possible effects of the extension of the bestseller clause to new areas in the national copyright law and the relationship between the new provisions and civil law invalidity rules.