Re: Moral rights (Was: copyright expiration as a spur to creativity)

Moritz Roettinger <moritz.roettinger[_at_]dg23.cec.be> wrote:
>
> On Tue, 01 Sep 1998, Pascal Kamina <pkamina[_at_]club-internet.fr> wrote:
> >
> > Just a remark to say that the concept that copyright is not
> > transferrable inter vivos is a concept developed under German law,
> > which is not shared by other "author's right" systems. For example
> > under French law copyright (i.e. author's rights less moral rights)
> > is freely transferrable (subject to mandatory rules regarding
> > contracts and specific prohibitions, such as the prohibition of
> > assignments of future works).
>
> Well, this migut be a question of definition. Under German and Austrian
> law you may, of course, transfer the "exploitation rights, economic
> rights" ("Verwertungsrechte") by means of license. But you can't
> transfer the whole copyright including the moral rights.

But can you "assign", instead of "license", these economic rights? My understanding was that under German law "economic rights" could only be "licensed" (due to the "personal" nature, etc. of copyright). I am wrong?

Under French law an assignment of economic rights is possible, since copyright ("economic" rights) is considered as a property right. By contrast, it is generally thought (although it is being discussed), that moral rights have a different nature (they belong to the category of "rights of personality"), which would explain why they are not transferrable nor waivable.

Pascal Kamina
<pkamina[_at_]club-internet.fr> Received on Thu Sep 03 1998 - 16:20:11 GMT