Germany Introduced Revised Copyright Law

On March 1, 2018, the new German Law on the alignment of copyright with the current requirements of the Knowledge Society (Gesetz zur Angleichung des Urheberrechts an die aktuellen Erfordernisse der Wissensgesellschaft, UrhWissG) came into force. After careful scrutiny, it became clear that the legal provisions are relevant to the compliance efforts of IT/CE manufacturers: In short, the law broadens the scope of rights to private copying, which is remunerated via copyright levies.

The UrhWissG specifies the acts of copyright use in the field of education and science that are permitted without requiring the consent of authors and other right holders. This leads to the assumption that copyright fees may increase. However, there are no new or higher claims, or planned tariff adjustments other than the ones known by collecting societies.

Nonetheless, the notion of higher levy claims could be adopted in the current negotiations on products by collecting societies. Negotiations are underway in Germany on copyright levies for hard disks, among other things, and the claims might go up to 34 Euro per unit.

1cc will continue to monitor developments.