LUXEMBOURG Law and Practice Contributed by: Emmanuèle de Dampierre, Elvinger Hoss Prussen
formance of their duties or on the instructions of their employer, the employer alone shall be entitled to exer - cise all economic rights in the computer program so created. Parties may provide otherwise by contract. The Luxembourg courts have not yet given a ruling (at least published) on the question of whether someone may claim authorship of a work that was not created by a human (eg, works created by artificial intelligence software or an animal). Joint Authorship Joint authorship may arise in the context of collabo - ration projects to which several authors contribute. There is no specific requirement for joint authorship of an original work, except that individual contribu - tions of two or more authors can be traced within a joint work. The rights of joint authors over a joint work must be organised by contract. In the absence of a contract, joint authors cannot exert their rights over the joint work, except in the following cases provided for by the Authors’ Rights Law: • where the contribution of the joint authors to a joint work may be individualised, each of the joint authors may exploit their personal contribution separately, unless otherwise agreed, provided that such exploitation is not carried out in conjunction with that of another joint author and is not prejudi - cial to the joint work; and • each of the joint authors remains free to sue in their own name and without the intervention of the others, for any authors’ rights infringement of the joint work and to claim damages for their share, provided that the other joint authors are implicated in the judicial proceedings. There is no statutory rule to determine ownership percentage for works created by joint authors. Joint authors must find an agreement if they consider that their individual contributions are not equal. Directed Works Joint works should not be confused with “directed works”, as defined under the Authors’ Rights Law as a “work created by several authors on the initiative
and under the direction of a natural or legal person who publishes or produces it and discloses it under his/her/its name, and in which the contribution of the authors participating in its development is designed to be integrated into the whole”. Authors’ rights over a directed work are not joint (as for joint works). The Authors’ Rights Law provides that, unless otherwise specified in the contract, the natural or legal person under whose name the direct - ed work has been disclosed is vested with the original economic and moral authors’ rights over the directed work. Directed works are frequently referred to as collective works. 3.4 Copyright Rights Under the Authors’ Rights Law, the holders of authors’ rights are granted a variety of exclusive economic rights over their original works, as follows: • reproduction right (including adaptation right, translation right and the right to integrate and extract one’s work in or from a database); • public communication right (including making works available in an on-demand format); • public distribution right; • rental right; and • lending right. The authors of works of graphic or plastic art (such as paintings, drawings, engravings, lithographs, sculp - tures or photographs) also have an inalienable and unwaivable resale right. This means they have a right to benefit to a certain extent from the proceeds of any resale of their work when a professional of the art market is involved as seller, buyer or intermediary in the resale. This resale right is subject to the various conditions laid down in the Authors’ Rights Law and a grand ducal regulation. Under the Authors’ Rights Law, the holders of authors’ rights are also granted the following exclusive moral
rights over their original works: • the right to disclose their works;
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