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Copyright Act

Act No. 121/2000 Coll., on Copyright and Rights Related to Copyright and on Amendment to Certain Acts (the Copyright Act) determines the relationship between the author and his/her work and defines the subject, here selectively in relation to common situations in the academic environment and provided library services:

  • author’s work (Section 2), making work public and publication of work (Section 4), author (Section 5), moral rights (Section 11), property rights - the right to use, reproduce and distribute (Section 12-17), duration of economic rights (Section 27), orphan work (Section 27a, b), work in public domain (Section 28), free uses (§30), reproduction on paper or other similar base (§30a), quotations (Section 31), library licence (Section 37), employee work (Section 58), school work (Section 60), etc.

Selected Sections

Author’s work (Section 2)

  • is defined as “a literary work or any other work of art or a scientific work, which is a unique outcome of the creative activity of the author and is expressed in any objectively perceivable manner including electronic form, permanent or temporary, irrespective of its scope, purpose or significance (hereinafter referred to as ‘work’).“ 
  • Examples: scientific article, book, e-book, book chapter, university textbooks, research report, proceedings paper, poster, etc.
  • On the contrary, the following are not considered to be works of authorship: the subject of the work in itself, daily news or other information in itself, idea, procedure, principle, method, discovery, scientific theory, mathematical and similar formula, statistical graph and similar object in itself.

Author (Section 5)

  • is defined as “the natural person who created the work”.

Co-authors’ rights (Section 8)

  • “The copyright to a work that, until the time of its completion, was created by the creative collaboration of two or more authors as a single work (work of joint authors), shall belong to all the joint authors jointly and severally.”

“Joint authors shall decide unanimously about the disposal of their joint work.”

An example from practice – storing and publishing the full text of an article in the repository (auto-archiving)

All co-authors should express their consent if one of the authors wants to proceed with the storage and open sharing of the work (e.g. the author's manuscript of a scientific article) in an institutional repository.

In practice, it is often not possible to obtain the consent of all co-authors for scientific articles, their automatic consent is usually assumed when auto-archiving in the repository. When deciding on the possibility of auto-archiving, the license agreement with the publisher is mainly considered, as authors usually agree to hand over property rights to the publisher when providing an article for publication (see property rights below).

Moral rights (Section 11)

  • determine authors rights to decide on publishing of one's own work,
  • recognize the right of the author to the inviolability of one's own work, in particular the right to grant permission for any change or other intervention in one's own work,
  • personal rights cannot be waived by the author,
  • these rights are non-transferable and expire upon the death of the author. 

Property rights (Section 12-17)

  • Right to use the work (Section 12) – “The author shall have the right to use his work in its initial form or in a form adapted by another person or otherwise modified, whether separately or in a collection or connection with any other work or elements, and to grant authorisation on a contractual basis to any other person to exercise that right.“
  • The right to reproduce a work (Section 13), i.e., “making of temporary or permanent, direct or indirect reproductions of the work or any part thereof by whatever means and in whatever form.”
  • The right to distribute an original or a copy of the work (Section 14), i.e., “making the work available in a tangible form by sale or other transfer of ownership of an original or to a copy of the work.”

Duration of economic rights (Section 27-28)

  • „Unless stipulated otherwise, economic rights shall run for the life of the author and 70 years after his death.“
  • Orphan work (Section 27a) is one for which the “author is not determined, or even if it is determined, it is not found even after a thorough search according to Section 27b.”

Work in the public domain (Section 28), i.e., “a work for which the duration of property rights has expired can be freely used by anyone without further ado.”

  1. Not considered as exploitation of a work under this Act shall be its use for personal needs by a natural person without seeking to achieve direct or indirect economic benefit, unless otherwise specified herein.
  2. Copyright shall therefore not be infringed by anybody who for his own personal use makes a fixation, reproduction or imitation of a work.
  3. Unless otherwise stipulated herein, use under this Act shall also cover the cases where a computer program or an electronic database is used to serve a natural person to meet his personal needs or a legal person or sole trader for their own internal use, including the making of reproductions of such works for such needs and uses; use under this Act shall likewise cover the cases where a reproduction or imitation of an work of architecture is made in the form of a building also to serve a natural person for his personal use or a legal person or sole trader for their own internal use (Section 30a) and where a fixation of an audiovisual work is made while it is performed from a fixation or during its transmission (Section 20) also to meet the personal needs of a natural person.
  4. A reproduction or imitation of a work of fine arts made from a natural person’s personal use in accordance with Paragraph (1) above shall always be visibly designated as such. 
  5. A reproduction made for personal use by a natural person in accordance with Paragraph (1) above may not be used for any purpose other than indicated therein. 
  6. The provision contained in Paragraph (1) shall be without prejudice to the provisions of Sections 25, 43 and 44.

          1. Copyright is not infringed by:
            1. a natural person who for its own personal use,
            2. a legal person or a sole trader who for their own internal use,
            3. anybody, who upon order, for personal use by a natural person,
            4. anybody, who upon order, for a legal person’s or a sole trader’s own internal use

            makes a printed reproduction of a work on paper or other similar base by the photographic technique nebo jiným postupem s podobnými účinky, or by any other process with similar effects, except where a printed reproduction is made of the musical notation of a musical work or musical – dramatical work and where – in cases under Clauses (c) and (d) above – the remuneration is paid in a regular and timely manner in accordance with Section 25.

          2. Provisions of Section 30 (4) to (6) shall apply mutatis mutandis.

          1. Copyright is not infringed by anybody who:
            1. In his own work uses to a justified extent excerpts from works of other authors which were made public;
            2. Uses excerpts from a work, or small works in their entirety, for the purposes of critique or review related to such a work and for the purposes of scientific or technical work and such use being made to the extent complying with fair practices and required by the specific purpose;
            3. Uses the work while teaching for illustration purposes or during scientific research, without seeking to achieve direct or indirect economic or commercial advantage and without exceeding the extent adequate to the given purpose; however, if possible, the name of the author, unless the work is an anonymous work, or the name of the person under whose name the work is being introduced in public and the title of the work and source, shall always be indicated.
          2. Copyright shall likewise not be infringed by anybody who makes further use of excerpts from a work, or small works in their entirety, as referred to in Paragraph (1) (a) or (b); provisions of Paragraph (1) after the semicolon shall apply mutatis mutandis.

          1. Copyright is not infringed by a library, archive, museum, gallery, school, university and other nonprofit school-related and educational establishment:
            1. if it makes a reproduction of a work for its own archiving and conservation purposes, and if such a reproduction does not serve any direct or indirect economic or commercial purpose;
            2. if it makes a reproduction of a work whose reproduction has been damaged or lost, provided that it is possible to verify with the exertion of reasonable effort that it is not being offered for sale, or a print reproduction of a minor part of the work, if such part has been damaged or lost; it may also lend such a lawfully made reproduction in accordance with Paragraph (2) below;
            3. if it makes available a work, including the making of a reproduction needed for such availability, which constitutes a part of its collections and the use thereof is not subject to purchase or licensing terms, except the communication of the work in the way specified in Section 18 (2), to members of the public by dedicated terminals located on its premises, such a work being so made available exclusively for the purposes of research or private study of such members of the public, provided that such members of the public are prevented from making reproductions of the work; this is without prejudice to the provisions of Section 30a (1) (c) and (d);
            4. if it lends the originals or reproductions of defended degree theses, dissertations, doctoral and post-doctoral theses to on -the-spot reference use, provided that it shall do so exclusively for the purposes of research or private study, and also provided that the author did not exclude such use.

          • “Unless otherwise agreed, the author’s economic rights to a work created by the author in fulfilling his duties arising from the employment or civil service contract with the employer shall be exercised by the employer in his own name and on his own account. The employer may only assign the exercise of the right pursuant to this paragraph to a third party with the author’s consent.”
          • “The author’s moral rights to an employee work shall remain unaffected. Where the employer exercises the economic rights to an employee work it shall be deemed that the author has given his consent to the work’s being made public, altered, adapted (including translation), combined with another work, included into a collection of works and, unless agreed otherwise, also presented to the public under the employer’s name.”

          1. A school or a school-related or educational establishment shall have the right to conclude, under usual terms, a licence agreement on the utilisation of a school work (Section 35 Paragraph (3)]. Where the author of such a work withholds his permission without stating a serious reason, such entities may claim compensation for the absence of manifestation of the author’s will in court. This is without prejudice to the provisions of Section 35 Paragraph (3).
          2. Unless otherwise agreed, the author of a school work may use his work or may grant the licence to any other party, unless this contravenes the legitimate interests of the school or school-related or educational establishment.
          3. The school or the school-related or educational establishment shall be entitled to claim an adequate contribution to be provided by the author of the school work from the income earned by him in connection with the exploitation of the work or with the granting of the licence pursuant to Paragraph (2) to cover the cost incurred by them in creating the work. Depending on the circumstances, the contribution may be up to the full amount of such costs. The amount of the contribution shall be determined with respect to the proceeds earned by the school or the school-related or educational establishment from the utilisation of the school work pursuant to Paragraph (1) above.

          Civil Code – Licence Agreements

          Licence agreements are governed by Act No. 89/2012 Coll., the Civil Code in the Sections 2385-2389.

          The licence agreement can be: 

          • exclusive: the licensee is the only one to whom the licence is granted,
          • non-exclusive: licensor does not lose the right to use the work as well as to grant a licence to other persons.

          Example from practise – treatment of property rights when publishing an article in a journal

          • The author should remember to maintain the rights to use his/her work, especially when concluding a licence agreement when publishing a work (book, journal article, proceedings paper, etc.). 
          • When publishing scientific articles with foreign publishers, it is common practise for the author to sign a so-called CTA – copyright transfer agreement, whereby he leaves the property rights to the publisher.
          • In such a case, it is up to the publisher if, e.g. the author’s manuscript can be stored in a freely distributed digital repository (open access).
          • Instead of acceding to CTA, the author may leave only the publisher with only a limited range of rights to use the work by concluding a Creative Commons licence.