CJEU weighs in on German PC and printer levies
Europe’s highest court ruled on Thursday that rights owners can demand levies from printer and computer-makers when their devices are linked together to reproduce copyright.
The Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU) was ruling on a referral from the German Federal Court of Justice, which is hearing a dispute over ‘fair compensation’ between a national collecting society, VG Wort, and several major technology companies.
Under EU law, manufacturers of certain devices helping to reproduce copyright without authorisation must compensate rights owners. VG Wort wants to charge several companies, including Epson and Xerox, to pay levies based on their personal computers, printers and plotters sold in Germany between 2001 and 2007.
VG also wants information on the nature and quantity of printers sold by other companies such as Fujitsu and Hewlett Packard since 2001.
The suppliers argued that printers and plotters cannot reproduce any works on their own, but only when linked to a device that uses a photographic technique or similar process to create an image of a work. Consequently, compensation should be levied only on such devices, not on printers or plotters.
In Thursday’s judgment, the CJEU found that reproducing copyright by a photographic technique or similar process includes “reproductions made using a printer or a personal computer where the two are linked together”.
But the court said member states should decide the level of fair compensation “paid by the persons in possession of a device contributing, in a non-autonomous manner, to that single reproduction process of the protected work”.
Fair compensation should not substantially differ from the “fixed amount owed for the reproduction obtained through the use of one single device” the court added.
It said if a rights holder authorises the reproduction of a protected work or if it doesn’t apply technical measures to prevent unauthorised reproduction, there should be no bearing on the level of fair compensation owed.
“Nevertheless, it is open to the member state concerned to make the actual level of compensation owed to rights holders dependent on whether or not such technological measures are applied, so that those rights holders are encouraged to make use of them and thereby voluntarily contribute to the proper application of the private copying exception,” it said.
The ruling is good for collecting societies, said Christian Frank, partner at Taylor Wessing LLP, speaking in a personal capacity.
He added: “Copyright owners have been deprived of their freedom to authorise reproductions while they might indirectly profit from the additional levies the collecting societies will now be able to collect.”
But the ruling may not have an important impact, said Wolfgang Götz, attorney-at-law with Klaka Rechtsanwälte, a Munich law firm, as the case is limited to devices imported to Germany between 2001 and 2007.
He added: “Collecting societies will get some money but I don’t think, at the end of the day, they will get an amount which will double their income.”
