Research Handbook on the Future of EU Copyright

1. Copyright without frontiers: the problem of territoriality in European copyright law
2. Copyright’s fundamental rights dimension at EU level
3. Subject matter
4. The subject-matter for film protection in Europe
5. The requirement of originality
6. From idea to fixation: a view of protected works
7. Duration of copyright
8. Authorship, ownership, wikiship: copyright in the 21st century
9. Economic rights
10. Moral rights
11. The moral right of integrity
12. Dealing with rights in copyright-protected works: assignments and licences
13. The issue of exceptions: reshaping the keys to the gates in the territory of literary, musical and artistic creation
14. Private copy levies and technical protection of copyright: the uneasy accommodation of two conflicting logics
15. Collective management of copyright and related rights: achievements and problems of institutional efforts towards harmonisation
16. Copyright protection of computer programs
17. The protection of databases
18. Choice of law in EU copyright directives
19. Overlap/relationships between copyright and other intellectual property rights
20. Relationship between copyright and contract law
21. European competition law and copyright: where do we stand? Where do we go?
22. Do whiffs of misappropriation and standards for slavish imitation weaken the foundations of IP law?
23. Access to knowledge under the international copyright regime, the WIPO development agenda and the European Communities’ new external trade and IP policy

It has been over fifteen years since the EU started harmonising copyright law. This original Handbook aims to take stock and questions what the future of EU copyright should be. What went wrong with the harmonisation acquis? What did the directives do well? Should copyright be further harmonised? Each of the 25 recognised copyright experts from different European countries gives a critical account of the EU harmonisation carried out on several aspects of copyright law (subject-matter, originality, duration, rights, and defences etc.), and asks whether further harmonisation is desirable or not.This way, the Handbook not only gives guidance to European institutions as to what remains to be done or needs to be remedied but is also the first overall picture of current and future EU copyright law. This Handbook will be of great interest to academics and intellectual property lawyers, as well general commercial lawyers, all over Europe because it reviews European directives in the field of copyright and also the relationships between copyright and other laws. Policymakers will also find much to interest them in the discussions regarding the future of EU copyright law and the proposed amendments to the existing legal framework.