Year: 2012
Type: book
Abstract: cultural inspiration cycle. 1 In all époques, new cultural productions have been inspired by and based upon pre-existing cultural material.Not surprisingly, copyright theory leaves room for the limitation of copyright protection for the purpose of supporting further acts of creation.From the perspective of utilitarian copyright theory, copyright protection is granted for a limited period of time to ensure a suffi cient production of literary and artistic works for the overall welfare of society.Th e grant of protection is only a vehicle within this theoretical framework to ensure a reservoir of diverse cultural resources that can serve as a source of inspiration and basis for further acts of creation.By providing a rich cultural landscape, the protection system supports cultural follow-on innovation.Similar conclusions can be drawn on the basis of the natural rights approach to copyright law.Viewed from the author-centric natural rights perspective, the furtherance of creativity based on pre-existing works is a matter of solidarity among authors.Later authors ought to have the same freedom of using preexisting works as building blocks for new creations as was enjoyed by their predecessors.2 Th erefore, it is a primary goal of copyright to allow authors to build upon pre-existing works when embarking on the creation of a new literary or artistic work.In this way, copyright law ensures a constant cycle of cultural productions on the basis of already existing individual forms of expression.3 Copyright law cannot attain this goal by simply providing for broad exclusive 1 Cf.M.R.F.Senft leben, 'Der kulturelle Imperativ des Urheberrechts' , in: M. Weller, N.B.Kemle, Th .Dreier (eds), Kunst im Markt -Kunst im Recht, Baden-Baden: Nomos 2010, p. 75.For a practical case raising the question of whether copyright law suffi ciently supports cyclic innovation in the cultural sector, reference can be made to the problem of digital sound sampling.See German Federal Court of Justice, 20 November 2008, case I ZR 112/06 (Metall auf Metall), GRUR 2009, p. 403, online available at www. bundesgerichtshof.de;F.J. Dougherty, 'RIP, MIX and BURN: Bemerkungen
Author: Martin Senftleben
Institution: University of Amsterdam
Language: English
Topic: Intellectual Property Law
Subfield: Law
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2138487293