German copyright law

German authors' right or Deutsches Urheberrecht is codified in the Gesetz über Urheberrecht und verwandte Schutzrechte (also referred to as Urhebergesetz or Urheberrechtsgesetz and abbreviated UrhG).

It should not be confused with copyright (exclusive rights to copy granted to distributors), and is more akin to authors' rights (exclusive rights to profit from one's work granted to authors).

Court decisions have set vastly different standards for the eligibility of works of applied art on the one hand and other types of work on the other, especially fine art. While the barrier is usually very low for fine art and protection is granted even for minimal creativity (dubbed "kleine Münze", literally "small coin" or "small change"), there are extremely high standards for applied art to be reached for it to achieve copyright protection. This is so because Geschmacksmuster (design patents) and Schriftzeichengesetz (typeface patents) are seen as lex specialis for applied art such that the threshold of originality must not be assumed low for them. This has been confirmed by courts several times, especially for logos, but also for earrings.

The Urhebergesetz is an authors’ right (“droit d’auteur”) or "monistic" style law. As such there is a special emphasis on the relation between the work and its actual author. The right is perceived as an aspect of the author's general personality right and as a general rule is therefore inalienable. This also means that there is no corporate copyright in Germany and the fundamental rights cannot be transferred except by Inheritance ("heritage").

While exclusive licences are almost as powerful as copyright transfer, the author always retains some rights to the work, including the right to prevent defacing and to be identified as the author. Employment agreements are frequently construed as granting the employer an exclusive licence to any works created by the employee within the scope of their obligations. For computer software, the copyright act expressly provides that all economic usage rights (as opposed to personality rights) "belong" to the employer.

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Wikipedia