Protecting Creative Works and Enforcing Your Rights
Copyright law is a key area of intellectual property law and one of our firm’s core specializations. Graphics, texts, photographs, and music—if considered protected works—benefit from long-term copyright protection, typically lasting 70 years after the author’s death. These works are protected in particular against unauthorized reproduction, even if the reproduction is only temporary, such as during a download or when stored in a computer’s memory.
A highly topical issue concerns the use of copyrighted content in AI training datasets. Without the explicit consent of the rights holder, such use is generally not permitted. German court decisions have confirmed that the use of such content does not fall under the exception in § 44a of the German Copyright Act (UrhG), as such use is neither transient nor incidental.
The exception for scientific text and data mining under § 60d UrhG only applies if the scientific purpose can be clearly demonstrated. Rights holders are therefore advised to set a machine-readable reservation of rights in accordance with § 44b (3) UrhG when publishing their content.
In addition to the commercial exploitation of works—for example, through licensing—copyright law also protects the author’s moral rights. These include the right of first publication and the right to object to distortion of the work. These rights are enshrined both in the German Copyright Act (UrhG) and the Swiss Federal Copyright Act (URG).
Attorney Gottschalk brings extensive experience in copyright law, including years of in-house work at media companies such as Universal Music, and as long-time secretary of the Copyright Committee of the Swiss chapter of AIPPI. He also advises on international copyright matters, such as the permissibility of deep links to protected content on third-party websites.
An important EU regulation is Directive (EU) 2019/790 on copyright in the digital single market, which addresses new forms of use online and aims to strengthen the position of rights holders in the digital space.
