Friday 6 May 2011

Commercial speech and slow death of the diversity of human expressions

Intellectual property and access to cultural diversity - Variable geometry for copyright duration?

Commercial speech and slow death of the diversity of human expressions

Tuesday 10 May 2011 at 1300
Speaker: Dr Christophe Germann, Attorney at Law
Venue: Oxford Law Faculty Senior Common Room

For further information, please see: www.law.ox.ac.uk/event=11084

The presentation discusses the idea of “variable geometry in copyright duration” as a possible new solution to implement article 7 of the 2005 UNESCO Convention.

This proposal that can be summarized as follows:

The terms of copyright protection for cultural goods and services, including entertainment, shall be subject to variable geometry: the higher the marketing investments the shorter the copyright duration of protection.

In a first stage, copyright terms shall be reduced down to the minimum of 50 years according to Article 12 of the TRIPS Agreement when the protected works enjoy high investments in their advertisement.

In a second stage, the EU shall propose an amendment of this provision at the WTO aimed at further reducing the terms of protection for copyrighted works enjoying predatory marketing, for example to one year after the first public release of the work.

The full duration of copyright protection provided by the copyright duration directive shall continue to apply to works that enjoy none or little marketing investments.

This new idea shall provide a level playing field for talents and contents from all cultures by imposing a desincentive for excessive marketing that silences talents and contents from diversified cultural origins.

This proposal is arguably in line with the rationale of copyright protection. The EU is currently contemplating an overhaul of certain elements of the copyright system in order to adapt it to the digital age. We suggest taking this opportunity by mainstreaming cultural diversity and introducing variable geometry of copyright duration in the context of this reform.

For more information on this proposal aimed at improving access to culture and reinforcing competition on a level playing field via copyright, please refer to the long version of the study for the European Parliament on the implementation of the 2005 UNESCO Convention on cultural diversity at www.diversitystudy.eu – see section “Main Study” (Introduction and Study Paper 2B, version of November 2010) as well as to the video discussion by Prof. Fiona MacMillan (University of London) in the section “Stakeholders' Dialogue”.