European UnionDirective 2001/29/EC on the harmonisation of certain aspects of copyright and related rights in the information society (InfoSoc Directive)
In force since , under challenge in court.
A snippet reproduction rule binding public and private bodies.
- Criminal exposure
- No
- Private right of action
- No
- Instrument type
- a directive or treaty
- Obligation class
- Licensing, Attribution
- Court action
A suit challenging this law is pending. No court has blocked it. Premium data
What it requires
- This Directive is addressed to member states, which implement it in national law; it harmonises the reproduction right (Art. 2) and the right of communication to the public (Art. 3), the baseline under which news snippets and cached copies are assessed.
- The temporary-copies exception (Art. 5(1)) is mandatory for member states, while the exception for reproduction by the press of published articles on current economic, political or religious topics where such use is not expressly reserved (Art. 5(3)(c)) and the quotation exception (Art. 5(3)(d)) are optional; each applies only in certain special cases that do not conflict with a normal exploitation of the work or unreasonably prejudice the legitimate interests of the rightholder (Art. 5(5)), so a news aggregator reproducing a short extract relies on the rightholder's authorisation or one of the listed exceptions.
These lines are LexLint's reading of the law's text. Also read by: Case C-5/08 Infopaq International A/S v Danske Dagblades Forening, judgment of (recorded ).
Who enforces it
Enforcement body
Rightholders, through the damages and injunction actions each Member State must make available (Directive 2001/29/EC, Article 8(2)); Member States provide and apply the sanctions (Article 8(1)).
Settledness
Case C-250/25 (Like Company v Google Ireland), a reference from the Budapest Környéki Törvényszék lodged on , asks whether Article 3(2) of this Directive, read with Article 15(1) of Directive (EU) 2019/790, makes the display of press content in the responses of an LLM-based chatbot a communication to the public, and the reference also concerns reproduction of that content. The Court of Justice lists the case as pending.
- As of
- Case link
- https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX:62008CJ0005
- Case citation
- Case C-5/08 Infopaq International A/S v Danske Dagblades Forening, judgment of
- Under challenge
- Yes
- Open questions
- Does 'reproduction by the press' in Article 5(3)(c) reach a news aggregator that publishes no articles of its own, in a Member State that has adopted the exception?
- What form of reservation makes a use 'expressly reserved' under Article 5(3)(c), and does a machine-readable signal such as a robots.txt directive qualify?
Also on the record
EEA status
- Annex
- XVII
- Status
- Incorporated
- Force date
- Joint committee decision number
- 110/2004
- Source link
- https://www.efta.int/eea-lex/32001l0029
- Decision date
What this law does
Harmonises the reproduction right (Art. 2) and the right of communication to the public (Art. 3) across EU member states, establishing the copyright baseline under which news snippets and cached copies are assessed.
Article 5 lists the exceptions, among them the mandatory temporary-copies exception (Art. 5(1)), the optional exception for reproduction by the press of published articles on current economic, political or religious topics where such use is not expressly reserved (Art. 5(3)(c)) and the optional quotation exception (Art. 5(3)(d)), each applying only in certain special cases that do not conflict with a normal exploitation of the work and do not unreasonably prejudice the legitimate interests of the rightholder (Art. 5(5)).
Recital 32 states that the Directive provides for an exhaustive enumeration of exceptions and limitations to the reproduction right and the right of communication to the public.
How courts have read itPremium data
Our analysis of this law draws on 74 court rulings.
What each ruling held, what it means for an app, and whether it still stands are premium data, in the Plus, Pro and Enterprise plans.
When LexLint raises it
When your app profile says your app reuses other publishers' content.
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