The hurried idea of the "European Copyright Code" in the light of the EU's (desirable) cultural and copyright policy
2018-07-12
2018-07-12
Certain documents published by the European Commission have referred to the possibility of preparing a "European Copyright Code" and establishing a "unitary copyright title." The paper (a partly modified and updated version of the paper presented at the 2012 Forham IP Conference) discusses the reasons for which the idea of such a "Code" does not seem to be timely (in particular, not in the form presented by the Wittem Group) and for which the creation of a separate "European title" is both unncessary and unjustified. The paper contains detailed comments on the so-called "European Copyright Code" published by the Wittem Group pointing out that (i) it would result in a decrease of the level of copyright protection which would not be the interest of the EU and its Member States; (ii) some of the draft provisions suggested in it are not in accordance the existing acquis and certain international norms; and (iii) some of them would not necessarily lead to harmonization but rather to disharmonization.