term of protection

noun · Schutzdauer

German copyright expires seventy years after the death of the author, § 64 UrhG, and the clock runs from the death rather than from publication. Joint works are measured from the last surviving author, and the neighbouring rights of performers, producers and photographers run on their own, much shorter terms, so one date rarely settles a whole recording or film.

Which translation, when

Schutzdauerthe rule: copyright expires seventy years after the death of the author, § 64 UrhG, the period being calculated from the end of the year in which he died, so the decisive fact is a date of death and not a date of publication, which is what English sources on older material most often get wrong when they reason from first appearance.

Miturheber und Sonderfällethe variations: where several authors created the work jointly the term runs from the death of the last survivor, and anonymous and pseudonymous works, works published in instalments and films carry their own starting rules, so a translation should not generalise the plain seventy-year sentence to every constellation.

verwandte Schutzrechtethe shorter clocks: performers, phonogram producers, broadcasters and the makers of simple photographs hold Leistungsschutzrechte with their own and much shorter terms, which is why a recording of a public-domain symphony is still protected and why clearing a film means clearing several rights with different expiry dates.

Why

Term of protection is the Schutzdauer, and the German rule is easy to state and easy to misapply. Section 64 UrhG provides that copyright expires seventy years after the death of the author, and the period is calculated from the end of the calendar year of death, so the operative fact is when the author died. English-language sources dealing with older material frequently reason from the date of first publication, which produces wrong answers for German works, and a translator working on rights clearances should treat any statement built on publication with suspicion. Around the basic rule sit the variations. For a work created jointly by several authors the term runs from the death of the last survivor, so a co-written song can outlive its principal author by decades. Anonymous and pseudonymous works, works appearing in instalments and cinematographic works have their own starting points, and none of them is captured by the plain sentence of § 64. The second layer is the one commercial files stumble over. Beside copyright proper German law grants Leistungsschutzrechte, neighbouring rights, to performers, to phonogram producers, to broadcasters and to the makers of photographs that fall short of being photographic works, and these run for their own, considerably shorter periods. The practical consequence is that a recording of music whose composer died centuries ago may still be protected through the performance and the recording, and that clearing a film means clearing a bundle of rights that expire on different dates rather than a single term.

Typical mistakes

The term runs from the death of the author, § 64 UrhG, so calculating from first publication produces wrong answers for German works.
For joint works the period is measured from the last surviving author, so using the principal author’s death understates the term.
Neighbouring rights run their own shorter terms, so a work in the public domain may still be protected in a particular recording.

What matters

Clearing rights in older German material: the check should start from the author’s date of death under § 64 UrhG, handle joint authorship and the special categories separately, and test the neighbouring rights in any recording or film on their own.

Authority

§ 64 UrhG

What the machine misses

A machine version of term of protection gives Schutzfrist or Schutzperiode, and the statutory word is die Schutzdauer, running seventy years from the death of the author under § 64 UrhG rather than from publication; the loose rendering also hides the shorter terms of the neighbouring rights that keep recordings protected long after the composition is free.

See what the machine does with this clause →

Examples

the term of protection	die Schutzdauer
seventy years after the death of the author	siebzig Jahre nach dem Tode des Urhebers
joint authors	Miturheber
neighbouring rights	verwandte Schutzrechte

More notes on these sections

public domain Gemeinfreiheit