Directive on harmonising the term of copyright protection
The
Directive on harmonizing the term of copyright protection was a
European Union (EU)
copyright directive issued
[The formal title is Directive 93/98/EEC of 29 October 1993 harmonizing the term of protection of copyright and certain related rights.] in
1993.
The goal was to ensure that there was a single duration for
copyright monopolies across the entire EU. The chosen term was that of
Germany, which had the longest copyright term of any EU state, lasting 70 years after the death of the author. Unlike some other copyright term extension acts, this act
retroactively restored copyright to works that had fallen into the
public domain in their source countries (see
grandfather clause).
Because this extended term (longer than that required by the
Berne Convention) was made available within the EU to non-EU copyright owners on the basis of
reciprocity, the directive was one of the main arguments in favour of the (now highly controversial)
US Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act.
Article 10 of the directive specifies that, if a term of protection is already running in a member state and is longer than the corresponding term provided for by the directive, the directive does
not shorten this term. This in particular applies to some copyright extensions found in the French code of intellectual property (CPI L123-8 and following), which grant copyright extensions to authors as a compensation for World War I and II, and another extension of 30 years for authors who died for France.
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European Union directive*
Copyright law of the European Union*
EU Copyright Directive*
List of European Union directives*
Text of the directive
