Frequently asked questions on copyright law

Copyright is not unlimited in time. It expires seventy years after the death of the author (Section 64 UrhG (German Copyright Act)). If the copyright belongs to several co-authors, it expires seventy years after the death of the longest living co-author. This means that from this point in time, any type of use of the originally protected work or other right is possible without the consent of the author or owner of the respective property right. From this point onwards, no further remuneration has to  be paid for this use. After the term of protection has expired, the works become public domain, i.e. they can be used by anyone. Public domain works are often identified by the public domain mark on the Internet.

Reproduction means any reproduction of a work by, for example, copying, printing, scanning or saving. In order to determine the extent to which the work may be reproduced, the purpose of the reproduction has to be taken into account. The most relevant purposes of use in the library are those for private use and for teaching and non-commercial scientific research. The following applies to these purposes of use:

1. For private use

It is permissible to make individual copies of a work for private use or to have them made by third parties (e.g. by the library) (Section 53 (1) UrhG).

Private use includes everything that takes place in a circle of friends or in the home and is not carried out with a commercial interest, i.e. without the intention of making a profit.

It should be noted that this only applies to small parts of a published work or individual contributions that have appeared in newspapers or magazines. The Federal Court of Justice has ruled that a maximum of 12 percent of a linguistic work can still be considered small parts. In addition, an absolute maximum of 100 pages has to be respected in order to adequately protect authors of works comprising several volumes in particular (BGH GRUR 2014, 549 - Meilensteine der Psychologie).

Typical examples:

• Printing an article from a scientific journal
• Copying an article from a current daily newspaper
• Scanning pages from a textbook
• Reproduction of CDs and DVDs for private use

2. For the purpose of teaching and instruction, as well as non-commercial scientific research

According to Section 60a UrhG up to 15 percent of a published work may continue to be reproduced, distributed, made publicly accessible and otherwise publicly reproduced for the following groups of people for the purpose of illustrating teaching and teaching at educational institutions for non-commercial purposes:

• for lecturers and participants of the respective course,
• for lecturers and examiners at the same educational institution and
• for third parties, insofar as this serves the presentation of teaching, teaching or learning outcomes at the educational institution.

According to Section 60c UrhG for the purpose of non-commercial academic research, up to 15 percent of a work may also be reproduced, distributed and made publicly accessible for the following groups of persons:

• for a specifically defined group of persons for their own academic research and
• for individual third parties, insofar as this serves to verify the quality of scientific research.

For the purposes of teaching, learning and non-commercial scientific research, illustrations and individual articles from the same specialist journal or scientific journal may be reproduced in full.

Up to 75 percent of a work may even be reproduced for the author's own scientific research.

Standards and normative works are generally protected by copyright. 

These works are available in the Patents and Standards Reading Room or digitally.

When reproducing, both the copyright (see section II.) and the additional licensing restrictions have to be respected.

For further information, please contact the Standards Info Point at TIB (standardstibeu).

Patent specifications are official works within the meaning of Section 5 UrhG and are therefore not protected by copyright. They can therefore be copied, stored and passed on without restriction.

For further information, please contact the Patent Information Centre Hannover at TIB (piztibeu ).

Yes, this type of use is one of the acts of use permitted under copyright law (Section 53 (1) UrhG).  The manufacturer of the respective device pays a lump sum to the collecting societies for this type of use (Section 54 UrhG). The same applies to scanning processes.