Newsletter
COPYRIGHT IN BUILDINGS AND LUXURY LINERS
Skyscrapers and luxury liners are popular tourist attractions, but most members of the general public are unclear as to whether their "exploita-tion" (as defined by the Copyright Act) may in-fringe copyright.
In a recent ruling, the Intellectual Property Office stated that buildings, as architectural works, are among the types of work protectable under the Act, and may not be exploited without the con-sent or authorization of the owner of the eco-nomic rights in the work, except in accordance with the Act's provisions governing fair use. Constructing a building according to architec-tural design drawings or architectural models, photographing a building, or making a model of a building, are acts of reproduction as defined by the Copyright Act, and as such require the prior consent of, or the grant of a license by, the owner of the economic rights in the architectural work concerned, except insofar as they qualify as fair use. However, in consideration of the public interest, Article 58 of the Act expressly provides that an architectural work that is on long-term display on a street, in a park, on the exterior walls of a building, or at another outdoor location open to the public, may be freely exploited in any way except for (1) reproduction by construction of another building, or (2) reproduction for the purpose of long-term display at a location as described above. That is to say, if an architec-tural work that is on long-term display at an outdoor location open to the public is exploited in any way other than the above two ways, the user of the work may claim fair use.
For example, the Taipei 101 office building is a building open to the public. If a tourist takes a photograph with Taipei 101 as its background and makes postcards from the photograph, this is within the scope of fair use, and there should be no issue of violation of the Copyright Act or of copyright infringement. As for a luxury liner, a ship is not a work as defined by the Copyright Act, and so enjoys no protection under the Act. Therefore, making postcards from a close-up photograph of a luxury liner, or a photograph featuring such a liner in its background, naturally does not give rise to any issue of copyright in-fringement.