Publicaties

Conventional wisdom in international copyright doctrine has it that the law of the country for whose territory protection is claimed governs copyright issues - whether it concerns existence, scope, duration, ownership, transfer or infringement. The Berne Convention of 1886 and other international copyright treaties do not lay down the lex protectionis as conflict rule, contrary to what is often assumed. This paper addresses the drawbacks of the lex protectionis for the initial ownership issue. It assesses alternative conflict rules that can increase legal certainty, while giving due respect to the diversity in national allocation regimes. There is a case to be made for the development of creator-oriented conflict rules for initial ownership issues, particularly if they also serve legal certainty by identifying a single governing law. Such rules may be construed using the main allocation principles of modern European private international law theory.