ALAI 2025 - Copyright and AI Symposium

Each reply to these questions should indicate if the answer is the same or different (if so, how) with respect to related rights compared with authors' rights.

I. Initial ownership [Session 2]

A. Whom does your country's law vest with initial ownership? (please indicate all that apply)

The author (human creator) of the work
1. Does your country's law define who is an author?
2. For joint works (works on which more than one creator has collaborated), does your law define joint authorship? What is the scope of each co-author's ownership? (may joint authors exploit separately, or only under common accord)?
Employers
1. Under what conditions, e.g., formal employment agreement, in writing and signed? Creation of the work within the scope of employment?
Commissioning parties
1. All commissioned works, or limited to certain categories?
2. Under what conditions, e.g., commissioning agreement, in writing and signed by both parties?
The person or entity who takes the initiative of the work's creation
(e.g. Producers; publishers) of certain kinds of works, e.g., audiovisual works; collective works
1. scope of ownership of, e.g. all rights, or rights only as to certain exploitations; what rights do contributors to such works retain?
Other instances of initial ownership vested in a person or entity other than the actual human creator? (Other than 6, below.)
If your country's law recognizes copyright in AI-generated works, who is vested with original ownership? (e.g., the person providing the prompts to request an output? The creator of the LLM model and/or training data? someone else?)

[b. For presumptions of transfers, see II (transfers of ownership, below)]

B. Private international law consequences

To what country's law do your country's courts (or legislature) look to determine initial ownership: Country of origin? Country with the greatest connections to the work and the author(s)? Country(ies) for which protection is claimed?

II. Transfers of ownership [Session 3]

A. Inalienability

Moral rights
1. Can these be granted to the grantee of economic rights? To a society for the collective management of authors' rights?
2. May the author contractually waive moral rights?
Economic rights
1. May economic rights be assigned (as opposed to licensed)? May an author contractually waive economic rights?
2. Limitations on transfers of particular economic rights, e.g., new forms of exploitation unknown at the time of the conclusion of the contract.

B. Transfers by operation of law

Presumptions of transfer:
1. to what categories of works do these presumptions apply?
2. are they rebuttable? What must be shown to prove that the presumption applies (or has been rebutted)?
3. Scope of the transfer: all rights? Rights only as to certain forms of exploitation?
4. Conditions for application of the presumption (e.g. a written audiovisual work production contract; provision for fair remuneration for the rights transferred)?
Other transfers by operation of law?

C. Transfers by contractual agreement

Prerequisites imposed by copyright law to the validity of the transfer, e.g., writing, signed, witnessed, recordation of transfer of title?
Do these formal requirements include an obligation to specify what rights are transferred and the scope of the transfer?
Does your country's law permit the transfer of all economic rights by means of a general contractual clause?
Does your country's law permit the assignment of all rights in future works?

D. Private international law

Which law does your country apply to determine the alienability of moral or economic rights and other conditions (e.g. the country of the work's origin? The country with the greatest connections to the work and the author(s)? The country(ies) for which protection is claimed?)

III. Corrective measures, subsequent to transfers of rights, accorded to authors or performers in view of their status as weaker parties [Session 4]

Does your law guarantee remuneration to authors and performers?
1. By requiring payment of proportional remuneration in certain cases (which)?
2. By a general requirement of appropriate and proportionate remuneration?
3. By adoption of mechanisms of contract reformation (e.g., in cases of disproportionately low remuneration relative to the remuneration of the grantees?
4. By providing for unwaivable rights to remuneration in the form of residual rights?
Does your law require that the grantee exploit the work?
1. Does your law impose an obligation of ongoing exploitation? For each mode of exploitation granted?
2. What remedies if the grantee does not exploit the work?
Does your law impose a transparency obligation on grantees?
1. What form does such an obligation take (accounting for exploitations? informing authors if the grantee has sub-licensed the work, etc.)
2. What remedies if the grantee does not give effect to transparency requirements?
Does your law give authors or performers the right unilaterally (without judicial intervention) to terminate their grants?
1. Under what circumstances?
  1. After the lapse of a particular number of years?
  2. In response to the grantee's failure to fulfil certain obligations, under what conditions?
  3. As an exercise of the moral right of "repentance"? (Examples in practice?)

IV. Streaming, transfer of rights, and management of large catalogues [Session 5]

Applicable statutory right
1. What specific statutory right applies to licensing the streaming of works and performances?
  1. Is it the right of communication to the public modelled after Article 8 of the WCT for authors, and the right of making available modelled after Articles 10 and 14 of the WPPT for performers and phonogram producers?
  2. Another right or a combination of rights?
2. For authors, does this right cover both musical and audiovisual works? For performers, does this right cover both performances fixed in phonograms and audiovisual fixations?
Transfer of rights
1. Are there any regulations in your country's law that limit the scope of a transfer or license to the forms of use already known at the time of the transfer or license?
2. If there are such regulations, when the statutory right referred to in section 1 was introduced into your law, was it considered a new form of use to which the limitation in subsection 2 a. above applies?
3. Are there any cases in your country's law when the statutory right referred to in section 1 is presumed to have been transferred to the producer of a phonogram or audiovisual fixation?
Remuneration
1. Are authors/performers entitled to remuneration for licensing the streaming of their works/performances?
2. Does authors and/or performers retain a residual right to remuneration for streaming even after licensing or transferring the statutory right referred to in section 1?
Collective management
1. In your country's law, is collective management prescribed for managing the right referred to in section 1? If so, what form of collective management is prescribed (e.g. mandatory or extended)?
2. If authors and/or performers retain a residual right to remuneration (ss 3 b.), is collective management prescribed for managing this residual right to remuneration? If so, what form of collective management is prescribed (e.g. mandatory or extended)?
Transparency and the management of large catalogues
1. Does your law (or, in the absence of statutory regulations, industry-wide collective agreements) guarantee that authors and performers regularly receive information on the exploitation of their works and performances from those to whom they have licensed or transferred their rights? If yes, what is the guaranteed periodicity and content of such information?
2. Are you aware of any case law where the complex chains of copyright titles, typical of large streaming catalogues, have made the management of works or performances non-transparent or otherwise challenging, such as, for example, the case of Eight Mile Style, LLC v. Spotify U.S. Inc. (https://casetext.com/case/eight-mile-style-llc-v-spotify-us-inc-1)?

Resources

Questionnaire