Contracts lie at the heart of the regulatory system governing the creation and dissemination of cultural products in two respects: (1) The exclusive rights provided by copyright law only turn into financial reward, and thus incentives to creators, through a contract with a third party to exploit...

A number of doctrinal concerns have been expressed regarding user contracts. To what extent do the terms of these licences depart from copyright law? Are the rights they grant to the owner broader or more restrictive? Are the entitlements of users, beneficiaries of copyright limits, hindered in...

The Court of Justice of the European Union (ECJ) has been suspected of carrying out a harmonising agenda over and beyond the conventional law-interpreting function of the judiciary. This study aims to investigate empirically two theories in relation to the development of EU copyright law: (i)...

‘Orphan works’ are works in which copyright still subsists, but where the rightholder, whether it be the creator of the work or successor in title, cannot be located.This report was commissioned to assist the UK government in evaluating policy options in the implementation of the Hargreaves...

This essay discusses the process of harmonization of the legislation impacting on intellectual property rights at international level and within the European Union. To this end, after an up-to-date account of the international treaties applicable within the EU and of the European Directives and...

Technological Protection Measures (TPMs) are the hard core of Digital Right Management (DRM) systems, which enforce the rights of the copyright owner in the digital environment. Copyright scholars expressed concerns that TPMs do not comply with copyright exceptions and limits (Hugenholtz 2000;...

What is the best protection, from an economic point of view, for the investments in databases? This is the general question addressed in this article. In particular, one asks whether a database producer can, and should, use contractual arrangements to obtain an additional protection on top of...

At first sight, it may not seem like copyright plays a role in the fight against climate change and more generally the protection of the environment. But in many ways, it does, and it does so with, maybe surprisingly, quite some importance. Indeed, copyright works can be extremely varied. In the...