The future of creativity was in the focus of the 10th MAKK Conference 2022 held in Zagreb, Croatia and organized by the Croatian Composers’ Society and the Croatian Copyright Society.
The MAKK International Authors’ / Creators’ Conference is a meeting point for creative industries, where relevant and current topics are discussed on interactive and insightful panels during the span of two days. Panellists are some of renowned international and regional creators and experts in the field, such as Björn Ulvaeus, Skye Edwards, Andy Wright, as well as Ceco Gaković, Aleksandra Kovač, Tinkara Kovač, Tonči Huljić, Darko Rundek, Dino Merlin, Momčilo Bajagić Bajaga, Husein Hasanefendić Hus, Miroslav Škoro, Zoran Predin, etc.
First day of the conference is always dedicated to the representatives of the creative industries like composers, performers, singers, whilst the second day focuses on legal issues regarding copyright and related rights.
10th MAKK Conference was a platform for some interesting legal topics.
Prof. dr. sc. Igor Gliha from the Faculty of Law, University of Zagreb share his thoughts on provisions of the new Copyright and Related Rights Act (OG No. 111/2021) that came into force on October 22, 2021 (please see: zakon_autor_2021_ENG.pdf (dziv.hr)), particularly in relation to the copyrighted work created during the course of employment – Article 100 of the new Act.
The following topics were also discussed:
- relationship between copyright and the Directive (EU) 2019/1024 on open data and the re-use of public sector information;
- relationship between GDPR and copyright;
- copyright created by an employee (work made for hire)
- material and legal shortcomings of the digital content and copyright.
Namely, under the provisions of the previous Copyright and Related Rights Act, employer could not acquire economic copyrights over the exploitation of a copyrighted work created during the course of employment – the author himself detained all the rights over his copyright work. The new Act has now changed that in favour of the employer.
We share the opinion that the new Copyright and Related Rights Act implemented important provisions for the protection of author’s and performer’s rights (including the EU Copyright Directive – Directive (EU) 2019/790 of 17 April 2019 on copyright and related rights in the Digital Single Market) the previous Copyright and Related Rights Act protected the authors better, particularly in relation to a copyrighted work created during the course of employment.
Another interesting panel discussion concerned “Buyout and copyright” in relation to actors, musicians and performers. Croatian actors presented a situation in which they are all forced to sign buyout contracts with the producers, whereby their performer’s rights are transferred to the producer entirely and therefore they do not get any further compensation for any future exploitation of their performance (reruns or further broadcasting on cable or VOD TV).
Obviously, new global trend wherein the employer’s rights supersede those of the employee when copyright work is concerned, has now arrived to Croatia as well.
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The importance of this conference has been confirmed once again, as this is one of a kind international authors’ / creators’ conference in the whole region. MAKK Conference is definitely dedicated to increasing knowledge on authorship and copyright, and keeping up with interesting trends within cultural and creative industries.
Author: Vanja Carantan, Senior Counsel / Attorney at Law
Photo credit: Samir Cerić Kovačević / Vedran Metelko
This text is for informational purposes only and should not be considered as legal advice. Should you require any additional information, feel free to contact us.
