Legislation

German Law on Strengthening the Contractual Position of Authors and Performers

Preliminary Remark

The German Law on Strengthening the Contractual Position of Authors and Performers of March 22, 2002, published in the Official Journal (Bundesgesetzblatt) Part I, No. 21 of March 28, 2002 and, according to its Art. 3, effective on July 1, 2002, essentially forms an Amendment of the German Copyright Law of September 9, 1965 (as amended through December 13, 2001). In order fully to understand the legal meaning and importance of this Amendment, the following English translation renders the text of the new law in consolidated form, i.e. in the context of the full text of the amended provisions of the original Copyright Law. Those parts of the relevant provisions which are amended or entirely new are italicized, in order to enable the reader to easily distinguish amended from non-amended provisions of the Copyright Law. In addition to the changes in the provisions of the Copyright Law itself made by Art. 1, Art. 2 of the Amendment has repealed Sec. 28 of the Law on Publishing Contracts (Verlagsgesetz) of June 18, 1901 (as amended through September 9, 1965). That provision of the Amendment has been omitted here.

The English translation is made in conformity with the WIPO translation of the German Copyright Law (Intellectual Property Laws and Treaties – April 1999, Germany, Text 1-01) from which also the non-amended parts of the relevant provisions of the Copyright Law have been extracted. The translation of a number of entirely new provisions (Secs. 32, 32a, 32b, 36, 36a, and 75) has kindly been made available by Prof. William R. Cornish, Cambridge, England.