[pd-discuss] How to build a public domain calculator?

Mon Nov 23 17:05:08 UTC 2009

2009/11/23 Angelopoulos, C.J. <C.J.Angelopoulos at uva.nl>:
[...]
> -       I am a bit confused by the second question as it seems to
> conflate the issues of parallel ownership by multiple owners over a
> single work with the issue of works that have been published in multiple
> parts, instalments, issues or episodes...

The idea here was that in both cases the "work" (be i the television
or a musical "work" with separate lyrics and music) were really two
"works" and that once considered separately you could go back to the
start of a flow-chart and apply to each work separately. As such the
two cases -- at least from the perspective of copyright term -- were
identical in that they required subdividing the "work" into two or
more smaller "works."

> -       On that note, even when handling the question of multiple
> authors alone, I think a distinction should be made between works of
> joint authorship, collective works and compilations. Are these

I think we should be careful with our term "work" here or use some
specific terminology to refer to some general object in which
copyright might adhere (e.g. a book, a recording) and the distinct
atomic copyright "works" which may exist therein

> possibilities offered different legal treatment in national law? (I'm
> using the terms in their British work here, i.e.:  works of joint
> authorship = works produced by collaboration where the contributions of
> the various authors are not distinct from each other / collective work =
> works produced by collaboration where the contributions of the
> collaborators are separate from each other / compilations = the compiler
> is author of the whole, although there may be several different works by
> other authors represented in the collection.)

Yes these are treated distinctly here in that only the first would
really be considered a work for the purposes of the
flowchart/algorithm (the others would all involve a preliminary
subdivision before application of the flowchart/algorithm). We thought
about adding this as a preliminary step but it was voted against as it
was felt that correct determination of what was a work was separate
from determining copyright term for a work.

> -       At any rate, I think it is important at least for EU Member
> States to include a question asking how works of joint authorship and
> collective works are defined in the national jurisdiction, given that
> the terms are mentioned in the Term Directive, but not harmonised...

This is what question 2 was about.

> -       Should we include a question about anonymous or pseudonymous
> works?

Isn't that included in the question: "[FC:2] What are the author
categories that result in different protection?" (if that isn't
obvious we could put explanatory text there ...)

> -       Should we include a question about maybe cinematographic and
> audiovisual works or other types of copyright-protected works that might
> still get separate treatment? (or is this intended to be covered by Q.4?
> I actually find its wording rather confusing...)

Do you not mean qu 3? "[FC:1] Are there categories of work that result
in different protection from that shown in the flowchart? "

Do you want to suggest alternative wording that is less confusing?

> -       Should we include a question about related rights?

What kind of related rights?

> -       Should we include a question about moral rights?

Moral rights was the one item we left out of the diagram though it was
discussed a lot. The idea I thought was that it was included in:

"[FC:4] How does term calculation for published and unpublished works
differ from the chart?"

but if this isn't clear we can add a note.

> -       Perhaps we can expand on the last question a bit (or add
> separate questions) to include examples of provisions such as the French
> ones for works created during the First and Second World Wars or works
> that are granted protection longer than the national norm (e.g. Peter
> Pan)?

We could though there is a trade-off between keeping this reasonably
short (and therefore increasing the likelihood someone fills it in)
and getting something that is really comprehensive. We also hope the
questionnaire/diagram can/will be used outside of the EU

> I hope this helps a bit! Comments and suggestions most welcome of
> course!

Very much so. Any suggestions for explicit amendments to the questions
or explanatory texts would be very useful.

Rufus