Copyright sign
The copyright symbol (© U + 00A9, from English copyright ) is a symbol in copyright law to identify an existing protection. In addition to the actual copyright symbol, there is another ( ℗ U + 2117, from English phonogram , also sound recording copyright symbol ), the serves to identify rights to audio recordings .
If the symbol is not available on a system, the surrounding circle is indicated by brackets: (c)or (P).
Legal meaning
United States
The Copyright Act of 1901 - like some American copyright laws since 1802 - provided for published works that a copyright notice had to be placed on copies of the work so that the work could benefit from copyright protection. The placement and content of these copyright notices were strictly standardized. In the 1901 Act , in addition to stating the copyright holder and the year of publication, a notice of copyright protection was required for most works, which had to consist of either the word "Copyright" or the abbreviation "Copr." For the first time, however, a special symbol, ©, should be sufficient for certain types of work.
Since the United States joined the Revised Berne Convention (RBC), the importance of the copyright mark has declined. One of the guiding principles of the RBÜ was not to want copyright protection to be linked to the fulfillment of certain formalities. For this reason, the United States abolished the requirement to protect a copyright notice on published works with effect from March 1, 1989. Since the congress still considered the note to be sensible, it still thought of it a (smaller) role: Today, the use of a copyright note restricts the procedural defense options of an infringer - slightly.
Convention Law
© sign
The copyright symbol is expressly mentioned in the World Copyright Agreement (WUA) of 1952. The WUA stipulates the following for all contracting states whose domestic laws require the fulfillment of formalities (in particular the registration of the work) as a prerequisite for copyright protection: A work that is published by a foreign nationals was published abroad for the first time automatically also fulfills the domestic formalities, provided that all work pieces that have been legally published bear the mark © in connection with the name of the owner of the copyright and the year of the first publication from the first publication. WUA member states thus had an incentive to use the copyright symbol, as they could ensure that the protection of their "domestic" work production in the other WUA states would at least not fail because of the formality requirements there - the copyright holders could thus "get away from the Obligation to comply with a large number of formal requirements [...] exempt ”.
The importance of this regulation in the WUA has decreased considerably with the success of the RBÜ, since foreigners are in any case completely free of formalities, so that the incentive effect of the copyright mark no longer exists as it once did. The RBÜ now has more than 170 member states (as of 2017).
℗ sign
The Rome Agreement of 1961 contains a regulation similar to the WUA in the area of related rights . Contracting states that link the protection of phonogram producers or performing artists or both with respect to phonograms to the fulfillment of formalities, must consider these to have been fulfilled "if all copies of the published phonograms that are on the market or their wrappers bear a note that follows from the mark ℗ exists in connection with the indication of the year of first publication and is affixed in a way that clearly shows that protection is claimed. "
The regulation of the Geneva Sound Carrier Agreement of 1971 reads in a very similar way: Contracting states that link the protection of sound carrier manufacturers to the fulfillment of formalities must consider these to have been fulfilled “if all permitted copies of the sound carrier that are distributed to the public, or their wrappings bear a note consisting of the symbol ℗ in connection with the indication of the year of first publication and affixed in such a way that it is clear that protection is claimed ”.
Germany
According to German law, the use of a copyright symbol is irrelevant for copyright protection. Whether something enjoys copyright protection depends solely on the legal protection requirements - a product does not benefit from copyright protection only because someone claims it, nor does an author have to provide his protectable work with a copyright mark or other notice in order to to benefit from copyright protection.
If the copyright symbol is followed by a designation (for example: “© Heinz Müller”), this may possibly have a legal meaning. For example, the German Copyright Act (UrhG) provides for a presumption of authorship with which a rights holder can reverse the burden of proof in his favor: If someone is referred to as the author of the copies of a published work, he will be regarded as the author of the work until proven otherwise (Presumption of authorship, Section 10 (1) UrhG). For example, if the back of a postcard sold in bookstores says “Photographer: Heinz Müller” and a competitor copies the photo to sell it himself, then Heinz Müller does not have to laboriously prove in a subsequent legal proceeding that he is is really the photographer and therefore entitled to claim. This is simply assumed because of the author's information on the card. A comparable construction also exists for rights holders: If the author has granted an exclusive right of use to a third party (e.g. a company), then - since 2008 - this rights holder can also benefit from a corresponding presumption for certain claims (presumption of rights ownership, Section 10 (3) UrhG). In practice, such information on copyright or right ownership is now partly made with the aid of the copyright symbol (in the example above, the postcard would therefore only read "© Heinz Müller" instead of "Photographer: Heinz Müller"). Whether such mentions, in addition to a copyright symbol, are also suitable to justify a presumption of copyright or right ownership is, however, individually controversial.
- For the presumption of rights ownership , it is predominantly assumed that the note can justify this with regard to the subsequent (natural or legal) person. In some cases, however, it is additionally required that express reference be made to the exclusive nature of the granting of rights.
- For the presumption of authorship , it is on the one hand represented that a copyright mark does not represent an author's designation, because the information behind the copyright mark does not refer to the authorship, but only to the right of use. According to this, a corresponding information would be unsuitable to justify a presumption of authorship. In most cases, however, it is assumed that such information can also give rise to a presumption of authorship if it can be seen that the name refers to a natural person .
Representation on computer systems
In some word processors, the copyright symbol can also be (C)generated by the character string when auto-correction is activated . As an alternative to the symbols © (U + 00A9) and ℗ (U + 2117), encapsulated alphanumeric characters with Ⓒ (U + 24B8) and Ⓟ (U + 24C5) similar looking characters are available in the Unicode block .
| Standard / System | © sign | ℗ sign | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Character encoding | |||
| Unicode | Codepoint | U + 00A9 | U + 2117 |
| Surname | COPYRIGHT SIGN | SOUND RECORDING COPYRIGHT | |
| UTF-8 | C2 A9 | E2 84 97 | |
| ISO 8859-1 | A9 hex | - | |
| HTML entity |
©
|
- | |
| XML / XHTML | decimal |
©
|
℗
|
| hexadecimal |
©
|
℗
|
|
| TeX / LaTeX | Text mode |
\copyright or\textcopyright
|
\textcircledP
|
| Mathem. mode |
\copyright
|
- | |
| Further |
ISO 6937 : D3 hex EBCDIC : B4 hex |
- | |
| Input methods 1 | |||
| Windows | CP850 ( TUI ) | Alt+ 1842 | - |
| CP1252 ( GUI ) | Alt+ 01692 | - | |
| macintosh |
alt/⌥+ G(DE / AT) alt/⌥+ C(CH) |
- | |
| Linux (with newer versions of X11 ) |
Compose, O, COr Alt Gr+ ⇧Shift+C |
- | |
| Neo | Mod3+ ↹, O, C4 | - | |
| Apache OpenOffice variants | - | - | |
| Microsoft Word | Keyboard shortcut | Alt Gr+C | - |
| Unicode input | A, 9, Alt+C | 2, 1, 1, 7, Alt+C | |
| Vim | Digraph 3 | Strg+ K, ⇧Shift+ C,O | - |
| Unicode input | Strg+ V, U, 0, 0, A,9 | Strg+ V, U, 2, 1, 1,7 | |
See also
literature
- Andreas Föhr: The copyright notice . VVF, Munich 1990, ISBN 3-88259-739-9 .
- Jane C. Ginsburg: The US experience with formalities: a love / hate relationship . In: Lionel Bently, Uma Suthersanen, Paul Torremans (Eds.): Global Copyright: Three Hundred Years Since the Statute of Anne, from 1709 to Cyberspace . Elgar, Cheltenham 2010, ISBN 978-1-84844-766-0 , pp. 425-459 .
Remarks
- ^ Ginsburg, The US experience with formalities , 2010, op.cit., P. 444.
- ↑ Foehr, Der Copyright-Vermerk , 1990, op. Cit., P. 2. See Section 18 Copyright Act [1909].
- ^ Ginsburg, The US experience with formalities , 2010, op.cit., P. 450.
- ↑ Patry, Patry on Copyright , Vol. 3 (as of March 2017), § 6:75.
- ↑ Näher Ginsburg, The US experience with formalities , 2010, op.cit., P. 450.
- ↑ 17 USC § 401 (d) .
- ↑ In detail Föhr, Der Copyright-Vermerk , 1990, op. Cit., Pp. 204–237.
- ↑ Art. III para. 1 WUA.
- ↑ Föhr, Der Copyright-Vermerk , 1990, op.cit., P. 207.
- ↑ Föhr, Der Copyright-Vermerk , 1990, op. Cit., P. 235 f.
- ↑ WIPO, Contracting Parties> Berne Convention , accessed on August 24, 2017.
- ↑ Printed with a German translation in UFITA 37/1962, pp. 73-104.
- ^ Art. 11 Rome Convention.
- ↑ BGBl. 1973 II p. 1669 .
- ↑ Art. 5 GTA.
- ↑ Schack, Copyright and Copyright Contract Law , 8th edition 2017, Rn. 254.
- ↑ Law to improve the enforcement of intellectual property rights of 7 July 2008, Federal Law Gazette 2008 I p. 1191 (corrected in Federal Law Gazette 2008 I p. 2070 ).
- ↑ Schulze in Dreier / Schulze, UrhG , 6th edition 2018, § 10 marginal no. 13, 62; Loewenheim / Peifer in Schricker / Loewenheim, Copyright , 5th edition 2017, § 10 Rn. 9, 19. Skeptical Hertin in Mestmäcker / Schulze, copyright , status: 55th edition 2011, § 10 marginal no. 68 (with reference to a possible understanding as an indication of a simply authorized person).
- ↑ OLG Hamburg, judgment of July 27, 2017, 3 U 220/15 Kart - DIN standards , juris Rn. 96 f .; Thum in Wandtke / Bullinger, Copyright , 4th edition 2014, § 10 Rn. 16 (Presumption of conformity only if the information refers to the exclusive nature of the granting of rights, for example through an addition such as “© XY (exclusive rights)”).
- ↑ OLG Hamburg, judgment of July 27, 2017, 3 U 220/15 Kart - DIN standards , juris Rn. 93; Loewenheim / Peifer in Schricker / Loewenheim, Copyright , 5th edition 2017, § 10 Rn. 9.
- ↑ OLG Cologne, judgment of January 29, 1999, 6 U 6/97 = ZUM 1999, 404, 409 - Overlays ; LG Frankfurt, judgment of February 20, 2008, 2-06 O 247/07 , juris para. 15; Schulze in Dreier / Schulze, UrhG , 6th edition 2018, § 10 marginal no. 13 (if there are no other copyright notices); Hertin in Mestmäcker / Schulze, copyright , status: 55th edition 2011, § 10 marginal no. 5; A. Nordemann in Fromm / Nordemann, Copyright , 12th edition. 2018, § 10 Rn. 12; Thum in Wandtke / Bullinger, Copyright , 4th edition 2014, § 10 Rn. 16 (not in general, but at least if the copyright notice is in a usual place and no other information is missing). See also Dreyer in Dreyer / Kotthoff / Meckel, HK Copyright , 4th ed. 2018, § 10 Rn. 27, 49, 69 (indication of a natural person next to the copyright symbol can establish the presumption of authorship “in the absence of other copyright notices”).
