Publication right is a type of
copyright
A copyright is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the exclusive legal right to copy, distribute, adapt, display, and perform a creative work, usually for a limited time. The creative work may be in a literary, artistic, ...
granted to the publisher who first
publishes a previously unpublished work after that work's original copyright has expired. It is in almost all respects the same as standard copyright, but excludes
moral rights
Moral rights are rights of creators of copyrighted works generally recognized in civil law jurisdictions and, to a lesser extent, in some common law jurisdictions.
The moral rights include the right of attribution, the right to have a work p ...
. Publication right is mainly found in the law of European countries and has no direct correspondence in US copyright law. Within the
European Union
The European Union (EU) is a supranational union, supranational political union, political and economic union of Member state of the European Union, member states that are Geography of the European Union, located primarily in Europe. The u ...
, not all countries originally had such a right, and where it was provided terms varied, but in 1993 national laws were required to be harmonized by
EU Directive 93/98/EEC to provide standard period of protection of 25 years from first publication.
[European Union: ]
Council Directive 93/98/EEC of 29 October 1993 harmonizing the term of protection of copyright and certain related rights
', 1993. Paragraph 4 defines the publication right. URL last accessed April 13, 2006.
Germany
Germany
Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the north and the Alps to the south. Its sixteen States of Germany, constituent states have a total popu ...
has had the publication right since 1965, originally with a term of 10 years after the publication, but extended in 1990 to 25 years.
[JuraWiki: ]
Editio princeps
'. The publication right itself is defined in German law i
URLs last accessed April 13, 2006.
France
In
French copyright law, article 23 of the March 11, 1957 Act granted a 50-year exploitation right term for
posthumous works, vested in the author's successors if the work was made available to the public during the 50 years following the year of his death, and vested in the owner of the work after that period.
In 1985, the term was extended to 70 years for musical compositions with or without lyrics.
This article was
codified as article L. 123-4 of the Intellectual property code in 1992.
In 1997, the exploitation right term of posthumous works was reduced to 25 years, if the work was first made available to the public after the 70 years following the year of the author's death, as a consequence of the implementation of the
EU Directive 93/98/EEC. However, Article 10 of that directive states that : ''where a term of protection, which is longer than the corresponding term provided for by this Directive, is already running in a Member State on the date referred to in Article 13 (1), this Directive shall not have the effect of shortening that term of protection in that Member State''.
The owner of a copy of a posthumous work, as distinguished from the owner of the original of the work, is vested with no such right, where the copy was transmitted without intent of transmitting such right.
United Kingdom
The requirement of the
European Directive 93/98/EEC to introduce a publication right into national law was implemented in the UK on 1 December 1996 by the ''Copyright and Related Rights Regulations 1996,''
[UK Parliament, ]
Statutory Instrument 1996 No. 2967: The Copyright and Related Rights Regulations 1996
', 1996. Paragraph
16 and 17
define the publication right. URL last accessed September 9, 2012. a
Statutory instrument which modified the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
The Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 (c. 48), also known as the CDPA, is an Act of Parliament, Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom that received royal assent on 15 November 1988. It reformulates almost completely the statutory ba ...
.
Under the 1996 rules - which were slightly amended again by the ''Copyright and Related Rights Regulations 2003'' - the right was granted to anyone who makes available to the public for the first time a previously-unpublished out-of-copyright work with the permission of the owner of the corresponding physical medium. Making available to the public includes such acts as issuing copies, making the work available online, and exhibiting the work in public.
Publication right expires at the end of the period of 25 years from the end of the calendar year in which the work was first published.
No publication right can arise from the publication of a work in which
Crown copyright
Crown copyright is a type of copyright protection. It subsists in works of the governments of some Commonwealth realms and provides special copyright rules for the Crown, i.e. government departments and (generally) state entities.Judge, E. F. (201 ...
or
Parliamentary copyright
:''See Template:Non-free Parliamentary copyright for Wikipedia's image licensing tag.''
Parliamentary copyright is a form of copyright in works made by either of the two Houses of the Parliament of the United Kingdom: the House of Lords or the H ...
subsisted.
[{{cite web, title=Copyright and Related Rights Regulations 1996, s16(5), url=http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/1996/2967/part/II/crossheading/publication-right/made, access-date=12 January 2015]
See also
*
Editio princeps
In Textual scholarship, textual and classical scholarship, the ''editio princeps'' (plural: ''editiones principes'') of a work is the first printed edition of the work, that previously had existed only in manuscripts. These had to be copied by han ...
*
First edition
References
External links
*Lydiate, H.:
The New Right', 1997. URL last accessed November 26, 2009.
Copyright law