Publishers vs. The State: Digital / paper cutting collections and press reproduction exception

Court of the Hague, 2 March 2005, Publishers versus the Kingdom of the Netherlands.

Copyright. The Court orders the State to discontinue, now and in the future, the scanning (including causing others to do so) or any other multiplication and the multiplication and/or publication, whether or not via an internal network, of works protected by copyright, which have been published in the publishers’ newspapers, with the exception of reports that do not carry the maker’s own, personal character and/or personal stamp, as long as no permission from the publishers has been obtained, except insofar as (the production of) paper cutting collections is/are concerned, which are distributed only in the form of paper (therefore not via email, intranet or electronically in any other way), such on penalty of immediately claimable damages of EUR 1,000 per day and per ministry during which any (part of a) ministry continues to fail to comply with this injunction; orders the State to compensate the publishers for the damage they have suffered due to the aforementioned infringement of their copyright in the period from 22 December 2002, to be further assessed by the Court and to be settled in accordance with the law.

Read the judgement here.

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