The 1912 Dutch Copyright Act [Auteurswet 1912].
Agreement
See “Contract”.
Author
The person who is designated as such in or on the work. If there is no such designation, then the author is the person who is specified as such by the publisher when the work is published.
Contract
Concluding a contract has various legal consequences for those concerned. Each party then acquires rights which simultaneously lead to obligations for the other party.
Copyright
Copyright is the exclusive right that the maker or creator (the official term is the “author”) of a work of literature, science, scholarship, or art has to publish it or duplicate it.
Duplication
The Copyright Act does not give a definition of duplication. Duplication includes producing copies containing the work, for example by having it printed. Adapting or translating are also types of duplication, as is storing a work in a computer memory.
Exploitation right
The right to bring the work to the attention of the public in some way and to produce data media containing the work.
Intellectual property law
Intellectual property law concerns the law of copyright and industrial property. Copyright is regulated in the Copyright Act, the Neighbouring Rights Act [Wet op de Naburige Rechten], and the Databases (Legal Protection) Act [Databankenwet].
Industrial property relates to the law on patents, trademarks and trade names, drawings and models, topography, and plant breeding. This website focuses on copyright law.
Licence
A licence is an oral or written agreement whereby the author of a work grants permission to a third party to carry out certain actions that are covered by copyright.
The difference between transferring and licensing can be compared to the difference between selling and renting out your house. If you sell it, there is a new owner; if you rent it out, you only give someone else the right to use it.
Personality rights
These are rights that allow the author of a work to oppose the publication of his work without his name being given or under someone else’s name and also to oppose any change in the work or any distortion, mutilation or other damage to it.
Publication
The text of the Copyright Act does not give a definition of “publish”, but it does list what it includes. Briefly, one can say that the term “publication” means bringing the work to the attention of the public in some way or other. Publication also includes providing the work electronically.
Repository
A repository is a system (hardware or software), together with its associated processes and support, that can contain information in various forms, for example text, datasets, images, or audio.
Transfer
The author of a work can transfer his copyright – either entirely or partly – to a third party. This can only be done in writing (i.e. not just orally). The transfer applies only to those powers that are expressly stated in the agreement or that necessarily arise from the nature or scope of the agreement.
The difference between transferring and licensing can be compared to the difference between selling and renting out your house. If you sell it, there is a new owner; if you rent it out, you only give someone else the right to use it.
Work
A “work” is an embodiment of the author’s ideas, thoughts, or feelings that is in some way perceptible to the senses, that has an original character of its own, and that bears the personal stamp of the author.