Rental Directive
Council Directive 92/100/EEC of 19 November 1992 on rental right and lending right and on certain rights related to copyright in the field of intellectual property
is a European Union directive in the field of copyright law, made under the internal market
provisions of the Treaty of Rome. It creates a "rental and lending right" as a part of copyright protection, and sets
out minimum standards of protection for the related rights of performers, phonogram and film producers and broadcasting
organisations.
Rental and lending right
The following rightholders have the exclusive right, subject to limitations, to authorise or prohibit the rental or lendingof their works :
- authors in respect of the original and copies of their works ;
- performers in respect of fixations of their performance;
- phonogram producers in respect of his phonograms; and
- producers of the first fixation of films in respect of the original and copies of their films.
rental right in favour of videogram producers, as this annulled the exclusive nature of the rights of film producers.
The rental and lending right may be transferred, and is presumed to be transferred in film production contracts unless
they contain provisions to the contrary : Member States may extend the presumption to authors and
performers. However, even once the rental and lending right is transferred, the author or performer retains an
inalienable and unwaivable right to equitable compensation for the rental and lending of their works: this compensation
is administered by the collecting societies.
Member States may allow a derogation for public lending provided that authors obtain
some royalties . Member States may also exempt "certain categories of establishments"
from the payment of royalties . These provisions is interpreted strictly: Portugal has been
censured for a transposition which effectively exempted all public institutions from payment of royalties,
and Belgium for failing to set a rate of remuneration.
Several countries already had Public Lending Right systems. However, the European Commission pointed out in a report in 2002 that many of these PLR systems failed to correctly implement the directive.
Related rights
The Directive sets out the minimum rights which Member States must accord to performers, phonogram and film producers andbroadcasting organisations, based closely on the provisions of the
Rome Convention for the Protection of Performers, Producers of Phonograms and Broadcasting Organisations.
The preamble is clear that Member States may go beyond this minimum protection if they so wish. The
fixation right for performers with respect to their performances and broadcasting organisations with
respect to their broadcasts is the exclusive right to authorise or prohibit recording.
The reproduction right is the exclusive right to authorise or prohibit reproduction:
- for performers, of fixations of their performances,
- for phonogram producers, of their phonograms,
- for producers of the first fixations of films, in respect of the original and copies of their films, and
- for broadcasting organisations, of fixations of their broadcasts.
subject to the first-sale doctrine:
- for performers, in respect of fixations of their performances,
- for phonogram producers, in respect of their phonograms,
- for producers of the first fixations of films, in respect of the original and copies of their films,
- for broadcasting organisations, in respect of fixations of their broadcasts.
licensed.
Performers have the exclusive right to authorise or prohibit the broadcasting of their live performances, but not of
recordings nor of rebroadcasts . Broadcasting organisations have the exclusive right to authorise or
prohibit the rebroadcasting of their broadcasts "by wireless means", and the communication of their
broadcasts to the public in places which charge an entrance fee . Phonogram producers have the right to
an equitable remuneration if their published recordings are broadcast or
played in public: this royalty is shared with the performers .
The limitations on related rights are of the same nature as limitations on copyright. Four possible limitations are
explicitly mentioned in Article 10:
- private use;
- use of short excerpts in connection with the reporting of current events;
- ephemeral fixation by a broadcasting organisation by means of its own facilities and for its own broadcasts;
- use solely for the purposes of teaching or scientific research.
Duration
The Directive originally fixed minimum periods of protection for the authors' rights and related rights which it createdin line with the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works and the Rome Convention
"without prejudice to further harmonization" in. The further harmonisation came with the
Directive harmonising the term of protection of copyright and certain related rights, which fixed the
protection periods across the EU and repealed these two articles.
| Rights | Directive 92/100/EEC minimum | Directive 93/98/EEC harmonized |
| authors' rights | 50 years from the death of the author | 70 years from the death of the author |
| related rights | 20 years from the date of fixation, performance or broadcast | 50 years from the date of publication or broadcast, or from the date of fixation, performance in the case of unpublished works |