Copyright in the EU: droit d’auteur or right to copy?

Abstract:

The European Union (EU) began to develop copyright policies as early as the 1980s even though no competence existed in the Treaties. The formulation of EU policies in the area of intellectual property has been the object of heated policy debates between a diverse range of stakeholders, at the heart of which are some fundamentally different conceptions about the nature of intellectual property and its role in the information economy. Thus, EU copyright policy is the complex outcome of the interplay between subnational, national and EU-level policy actors that were all trying to ‘frame the policy debate’ in order to control policy and policy outcomes. This article explains why certain policy choices were made in the formulation of EU policies, when several policy options were, in principle, available. It argues, essentially, that insofar as the locus of decision-making shifted towards the EU level as a result of European institutions' use of their agenda-setting and judiciary powers, policy outcomes were, in a second stage, more likely to favour liberal policy solutions.