Re: West loses major copyright decision

On Tue, 17 Jun 1997, Jon Bing <jon.bing[_at_]jus.uio.no> wrote:
>
> In Germany, the court decisions are available through the JURIS system
> (the name is identical to the former service of the US Department of
> Justice, but they got the permission for duplicating the name). But I
> really do not know who write the abstract (the "Leitzatskult" is a thing
> of the past), or whether there is copyright in the abstract.

There are official abstracts written by the German courts and unofficial abstracts written by law reviews which publish decisions. The official abstracts are not protected by copyright, cf. section 5 of the German Copyright Act (Urheberrechtsgesetz). The unofficial abstracts are protected by copyright.

Section 5 of the German Act reaches farther than s. 105 of the American Act, which only excludes U.S. Government works from copyright protection. Section 5 of the German Act excludes all official works including all court opinions and official abstracts and of course statutes and regulations (federal, state and local) etc. from copyright protection.

Alexander Klett
aklett[_at_]blue.weeg.uiowa.edu Received on Wed Jun 18 1997 - 15:18:48 GMT