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Copyright in education

On June 24, 2020, the German Federal Ministry of Justice and Consumer Protection published a discussion draft for a second law to adapt copyright law to the requirements of the digital single market. In addition to adjustments to copyright contract law, the draft also addresses the responsibility of upload platforms, among other things.

Comments could be submitted until July 31, 2020. Here you can find the detailed statement of the Coalition for Action "Copyright for Education and Science".

With the entry into force of the Copyright and Knowledge Society Act on 1 March 2018, the previously scattered education- and science-specific restrictions were (newly) merged in the newly created sections 60a ff UrhG.

These new regulations were limited until 28 February 2023; in this regard, the German Rectors' Conference (Hochschulrektorenkonferenz) called on 06 February 2020 for the time limit to be lifted immediately in view of the obligations arising from the EU Directive. For research and teaching, the new §§ 60a - 60h represent significant changes and, in part, legally secure improvements. They deal with, among other things:

§ 60a Teaching and Learning
§ 60c Scientific Research
§ 60d Text and Data Mining
§ 60h Appropriate Remuneration for the Legally Permitted Uses

§ 60a - Teaching and Learning

The most important changes for the provision of materials for teaching and learning in § 60a are the provision of up to 15% of a work, individual articles, essays from specialist journals, works of small volume and the complete provision of out-of-print books.

Please also note the information on alternate materials.

Detailed information on § 60a UrhG

§ 60c - Scientific Research

(1) For the purpose of non-commercial scientific research, up to 15% of a work may be reproduced, distributed and made publicly available

for a defined group of persons for their own scientific research as well as for individual third parties, insofar as this serves to verify the quality of scientific research.

(2) Up to 75 % of a work may be reproduced for the author's own academic research.

Illustrations, individual articles from the same journal or scientific periodical, other works of small volume and out-of-print works may be used in their entirety in derogation from paragraphs 1 and 2.

§ 60d - Text and Data Mining

(1) In order to automatically evaluate a large number of works (original material) for scientific research, it is permitted,

to duplicate the original material automatically and systematically in order to create a corpus for evaluation, in particular through normalisation, structuring and categorisation, and
to make the corpus publicly accessible to a defined group of persons for joint scientific research and to individual third parties for the purpose of reviewing the quality of scientific research.
In doing so, the user may only pursue non-commercial purposes.

(2) If database works are used in accordance with paragraph 1, this shall be deemed to be normal use in accordance with section 55a, first sentence. If insubstantial parts of databases are used in accordance with paragraph 1, this shall be deemed to be compatible with the normal exploitation of the database as well as with the legitimate interests of the database producer in terms of section 87b, paragraph 1, second sentence and section 87e.

(3) The corpus and the copies of the original material shall be deleted upon completion of the research work; the making available to the public shall be terminated. However, it shall be permitted to transfer the corpus and the reproductions of the original material to the institutions referred to in sections 60e and 60f for permanent storage.

Remuneration as of 01/03/2018

The KMK and VG WORT have not yet concluded contractual negotiations on a remuneration agreement for the legally permitted uses for teaching, science and institutions according to section 60 a, c, h UrhG.
However, the use according to the legal regulations has come into effect.