SWITZERLAND Law and Practice Contributed by: Peter Schramm, Timmy Pielmeier, Michael Ritscher and Andrea Schäffler, MLL Legal
is only permissible if the contributions to the work as a whole are separable, because they belong to different work categories (eg, text and illustrations of a book). 3.4 Copyright Rights The rights granted to authors are statutory and are outlined in Articles 9, 10 and 11 of the Swiss Copyright Act; they all persist throughout the term of copyright protection. The author’s rights can be divided into two groups: • moral rights (droit moral), which are the rights of the recognition of authorship, the right of publica - tion and the right to oppose distortion of the work; and • (economic) exploitation rights, which are granted universally by an undefined general clause. Articles 10 (1) and 11 of the Swiss Copyright Act state that it is the author’s exclusive right to decide if, when and how the work is used. The right is illustrated by a non-exhaustive enumeration of examples, including the rights to: • produce copies of the work, such as printed mat - ter, phonograms, audiovisual fixations or data carri - ers (reproduction right); • offer, transfer or otherwise distribute copies of the work (distribution right); • recite, perform or present a work, make it percep - tible somewhere else or make it available directly or through any kind of medium in such a way that persons may access it from a place and at a time individually chosen by them (performance, commu - nication and making available right); • broadcast the work by radio, television or similar means, including by wire (broadcasting right); • retransmit works by means of technical equipment, the provider of which is not the original broadcast - ing organisation, including in particular by wire (rebroadcasting right); • make works made available, broadcast and retransmitted perceptible (making perceptible right); and • decide if, when and how the work may be altered and if, when and how the work may be used to
create a derivative work or may be included in a collected work (adaptive use right). The author of a computer program also has the exclu - sive rental right (rental rights are only for computer programs). The moral right’s essence/core elements cannot be assigned or waived. Exploitation rights can be assigned, unlike in Germany, for example. 3.5 Term of Protection and Termination Copyright protection in all works, regardless of the respective category, terminates 70 years after the death of the author (post mortem auctoris). In the case of computer programs only, the protection terminates 50 years after the death of the author. The term of protection regarding joint works terminates 70 years after the death of the last surviving author (50 years for computer programs). Copyright terminates in total; no rights survive the expiration of the term. Swiss law does not provide for protection of moral rights post-mortem based on other statutes. Other means of protection, such as unfair competition law or trade mark law, potentially do not terminate and are applicable after the copyright term expires (principle of cumulation). 3.6 Collective Rights Management Systems There are collective rights management and corre - sponding collecting societies in Switzerland, which aim to facilitate the exploitation of copyright and neighbouring rights in cases of mass use. The corre - sponding statutes are incorporated in Articles 40–60 of the Swiss Copyright Act. The goals of the system are as follows: • primarily to enable creators to realise their rights in cases of mass use, which is deemed to be practi - cally impossible without collective rights manage - ment; • to ensure smooth legal relations between authors and users, for example by the simple and acces - sible organisation of licensing; • to control the market power of the collecting socie - ties and prevent misuse of such market power by implementing an obligation of equal treatment (of
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