van Gompel, Stef --- "Formalities in the Digital Era: An Obstacle or Opportunity?" [2010] ELECD 524; in Bently, Lionel; Suthersanen, Uma; Torremans, Paul (eds), "Global Copyright" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2010)

Book Title: Global Copyright

Editor(s): Bently, Lionel; Suthersanen, Uma; Torremans, Paul

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781848447660

Section: Chapter 29

Section Title: Formalities in the Digital Era: An Obstacle or Opportunity?

Author(s): van Gompel, Stef

Number of pages: 30

Extract:

29. Formalities in the digital era:
an obstacle or opportunity?
Stef van Gompel*

1 INTRODUCTION

For a very long time in the history of copyright, the coming into existence
and/or the exercise of copyright was subjected to formalities of some kind.
The first modern laws on copyright, including the 1710 UK Statute of
Anne, the 1790 US Federal Copyright Act and the 1791 and 1793 French
droit d'auteur decrees, all imposed formalities. To enjoy copyright protec-
tion or to enforce the right before courts, these laws required authors or
copyright owners to register their copyrights, to deposit copies of their
works or to mark these copies with some kind of copyright notice.1 These
statutory formalities were maintained in later copyright acts, not only of
the states just mentioned, but of nearly all countries worldwide.2



* Ph.D. candidate, Institute for Information Law, University of Amsterdam;
LL.M. University of Amsterdam (2005). You are invited to direct any comments,
criticism or ideas on this paper to: [e-mail].
1 See secs II (registration) and V (deposit) of the Act for the Encouragement

of Learning (1710), 8 Anne, c. 19 (UK); secs 1 (renewal registration), 3 (registra-
tion and publication of a copy of the record of entrance in US newspapers) and 4
(deposit) of the US Federal Copyright Act of 31 May 1790 (1st Cong., 2nd Sess.,
c. 15); and art. 6 of the French Decree of 19­24 July 1793 on the property rights
of authors ...