Brussels, 13/09/2012 (Agence Europe) - On Thursday 13 September, in its plenary session, the European Parliament adopted the report by Polish Socialist Lidia Geringer de Oedenberg on the use of orphan works by 531 votes in favour, 11 against, with 65 abstentions. The text was the subject of an informal agreement on 6 June between the Parliament and the Council of Ministers. The Parliament legal affairs committee adopted the report in July. The new legislation means that so-called orphan works (works covered by copyright but whose holders cannot be identified) can be published throughout the European Union.
Until now, the digitalisation of an orphan work was difficult or indeed impossible since, in the absence of the right holder, there is no way to obtain permission to do so. The new rules would protect institutions that use orphan works (for non-profit purposes) from future copyright infringement claims.
Under the new rules, a work would be deemed to be “orphan” if a “diligent” search made in good faith failed to identify or locate the copyright holder. The legislation lays down criteria for carrying out such searches.
MEPs agreed that the right holder should be entitled to put an end to the orphan status of a work at any time and claim appropriate compensation for the use made of it. They nonetheless inserted a provision to protect public institutions from the risk of having to pay large sums to authors who show up later. MEPs also insisted that the text includes an article to allow public institutions to generate some revenue from the use of an orphan work (e.g. goods sold in a museum shop). All of this revenue would have to be used to pay for the search and the digitisation process. (IL/trans/fl)