Tuesday 5 April 2011

Reporting on art exhibitions in Germany – fair use of images of artworks

It is a well-known principle of UK copyright law that fair dealing with a work (other than a photograph) for the purpose of reporting current events does not infringe any copyright in the work provided that it is accompanied by a sufficient acknowledgment.

It seems, however, that in Germany images of artworks may only benefit from this fair use defence to copyright infringement for as long as the event that is being reported is still current or an “event of the day.”

Birgit Clark from the IPKat blog team has supplied a great summary of the decision of the German Bundesgerichtshof which deals with the issue here.

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