The following text summarizes the specialist article by Philip Kübler. The original text from Reporting Times is available as a PDF (German).
First recommendation: Respect third-party rights
People’s knowledge and creativity almost always consist of texts, images, audio or videos – sometimes also three-dimensional and offline. Copyright protects all contents and expressions that are individually created by humans. Inspirations, information and ideas are not protected. Where do copyright-relevant uses take place? Internally, often when archiving, in presentations and when copying. Externally on websites and in social media, in reports and brochures, in material for events and media. Ensure risk-based compliance – including in copyright.
Second recommendation: Pay flat-rate tariffs
Copyright has the advantage that everyday uses are regulated with a central royalty. In Switzerland, the collective management organization ProLitteris is responsible for copying royalties (Common Tariff 8). Companies pay a few francs per year and full-time position and additionally for media reviews and teaching (courses) to external persons. The flat rate allows analog and digital copying and forwarding of excerpts from publications of all kinds for business use. In addition, Common Tariff 3a of the collective management organization SUISA has a broad scope of application for background music and similar uses in rooms and at locations that are publicly accessible. Such flat-rate royalties replace a multitude of individual rights clearances. The tariff system in Switzerland is an internationally recognized model – legally reliable, simple, with moderate costs and with private-sector cooperatives as actors that are subject to state supervision.
Third recommendation: Licenses for publications and for artificial intelligence
In addition to flat-rate royalties, companies need individual licenses as soon as uses go beyond internal reproduction or background use. Currently, companies are interested in online publications and AI processing – licenses are required here. One way is to grant rights by contract, content by content. You use image agencies, contact publishing houses or license from authors. The other way – significantly simpler – is via a collective management organization, in the area of text and image via ProLitteris. The cooperative offers collective licenses at moderate costs. Licensed are artworks, archive material and works that are used with internal AI systems. The new Copyright Act has created extended collective licenses for this purpose. There are even collective agreements for rightsholders who are not known or cannot be located.
Fourth recommendation: Claim your own creations
The positive flip side of copyright is that your own creative services are also protected. They do not have to be art – factual texts, research results, product images and marketing material, audio and videos also have copyright. Companies produce such works and have the rights transferred or granted to them. It is advisable to mark the creations with a copyright notice and a source reference. Should content be freely reusable? With which credits and with which license to third parties is it published? Those who manage their creative services and control the channels use creativity as an intangible asset. Intellectual property does not only work for invention patents and registered designs, but also for creative works. There is no protection for simple everyday expressions and for automatic AI-generated products.
Fifth recommendation: Enforce your own rights
You can have rights and should claim them – but ultimately, proof and enforcement count. Due to the mass use of publicly available contents, in particular by models and systems of artificial intelligence (AI), your own ideas become vulnerable. This applies, based on personality rights and data protection, even to the voice and the portrait of representatives of an organization who appear on the internet or in public. Contract management and appropriate documentation serve as proof of what is genuine and current, what is factually correct and authorized. It should remain traceable who created a creative service and which rights the company holds. Not only employment contracts must be taken into account, but also contracts for creative services and contracts for work with software suppliers.
Trustworthy repositories with a digital seal can produce certificates: evidence of the time and existence of a file. ProLitteris is currently launching such a service under the name «MyCopyright» in cooperation with the IT company «Swiss Trust Layer».
For work results that were created by or with AI, the question increasingly arises whether there are any rights in them at all. It depends on a sufficient share of human creativity and on novelty. Those who want to prove this later should be able to document the creation process of the intangible assets. ProLitteris will soon offer support for this as well.
At the political and legal level, the collective management organization ProLitteris is dealing with the impacts and opportunities of artificial intelligence (AI) for copyright. The current status:
- Training and retrieval: AI infringes copyrights if it uses protected works without a license. First court decisions are available. Switzerland is facing a clarification in the Copyright Act. In parallel, the EU is modifying the European legal framework.
- Text and data analysis with AI: Companies can make the translation, summarizing and evaluation of protected sources legally reliable by obtaining an extended collective license for internal AI uses from ProLitteris. As a company, contact ProLitteris.
- In addition to licenses for AI, there will be declarations of exception by rightsholders. The key challenge is called «opt-out». An effective and pragmatic system could be based on data and services of collective management organizations. This solution is still a long way off.
As a cooperative for copyrights, ProLitteris forms the bridge between the holders and the users of rights. We receive information and suggestions and aim to continuously improve our service for companies as well.