We attended the International Literary and Artistic Association (ALAI) Congress - “Copyright, Competition and Innovation”

Our IP team participated in the International Literary and Artistic Association (ALAI) Congress – “Copyright, Competition and Innovation”, held in Madrid from 29 September to 1 October 2021. As expected, the discussions were focused on the most debated recent developments in the area of copyright law and mainly on article 17 “Use of protected content by online content-sharing service providers” (“OCSSPs”) of the Directive 2019/790 (“DSM Directive”). This article, which establishes and regulates a new licensing market between OCSSPs and rights holders, is aiming to provide a solution to the so called “Value Gap” which has been created all these years due to the fact that the OCSSPs were earning unjustifiable value from the exploitation of works protected under copyright law, without the rights holders having the opportunity to be benefited from such value. The speakers presented detailed analysis on each of the provisions of this article related to the license procedure and the remuneration of the rights holders and proposed different solutions for a balanced regulation of the conflicting rights of all the stakeholders. In this respect, they expressed opinions supporting mainly the mechanism of extended collective licensing (i.e. execution of collective licensing agreements applying to both members and non-members of collecting societies) instead of an individual licensing system, in order for the rights holders to strengthen their bargaining power, while there was a tentative discussion around the topic of how any such licensing shall be effective to both the country of origin and the country of reception of the respective works.
For more information, please contact our partner, Pigi Konstantinou and associate, Marialena Mavrikaki.