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On 19 June 2020, the Council for Intellectual Property’s Copyright and Related Rights Section adopted an opinion on the transposition of Directive (EU) 2019/790 on copyright and related rights in the Digital Single Market and amending Directives 96/9/EC and 2001/29/EC.
This Directive comprises a wide variety of topics, such as:
- exceptions for text and data mining;
- exceptions for teaching in a cross-border context;
- a system for the exploitation of out-of-commerce works by cultural institutions;
- a new related right for press publishers;
- measures relating to certain uses of protected content by online content-sharing service providers;
- and provisions relating to the contract rights of authors and performers.
This Directive must be transposed into Belgian law by 7 June 2021.
In view of the broad range of topics in this opinion, representatives of the Communities, of federal scientific institutions, of the Internet Service Providers (ISPs), of book publishers and of the journalists’ associations were invited.
The Intellectual Property Council’s Copyright and Related Rights Section met regularly to discuss the transposition of Directive 2019/790 between 19 June 2019 and 19 June 2020, the day when the opinion was definitively adopted. Following a general discussion on the Directive, more targeted discussions took place at different stages on the basis of working documents (in the form of draft provisions and a draft explanatory memorandum), in order to take into account the remarks and amendments suggested by the Council. The opinion was finally adopted during two video-conference meetings of the Council for Intellectual Property on 4 and 19 June 2020.
The actual opinion follows the structure of the Directive. For every article of the Directive, the opinion comprises the subject of the matching article, as well as the suggested way of transposing it and a brief overview of the main points of discussion and points of view made by the Council. The annexes of the opinion comprise the Draft Bill and the draft explanatory memorandum, as shared with the Council during the meetings on 4 June 2020 (article 1 to 4 and 8 to 17 of the Directive) and 19 June 2020 (article 6, 7, and 18 until the end of the Directive), as well as the contributions by the Council members and the external invitees.
