Newsletter
AMENDMENT TO ARTICLES 37, 81 AND 82 OF THE COPYRIGHT ACT
Broadcasting radio and TV programs through loudspeakers or other media is very common at business premises such as hotels, hospitals, restaurants, coffee shops, department stores, hypermarkets, convenience shops, long-distance coaches, and sightseeing buses where the public can easily access. Under relevant copyright laws, such broadcasting may be considered a rebroadcasting or a public performance of relevant programs (also known as "secondary public broadcasting"). According to the Copyright Act, any use of copyrighted work without permission may constitute a copyright infringement and may result in criminal liabilities.
The Intellectual Property Office (IPO) holds that such secondary public broadcasting is to utilize another's works in quantity, the utilizer is unable to know or control the utilized works in advance, the utilizer impossibly obtains license for each of the utilized works, the right holder only obtains limited economic interests in such secondary public broadcasting, and the criminal punishment is not required as the civil remedies should be adequate for copyright protection of works. By referring to Paragraph 2 of Article 11bis of the Berne Convention, which provides the conditions for a member country to exercise its exclusive rights to publicly communicate the content of a copyrighted work by loudspeaker or other apparatus for rebroadcast purpose, the IPO submitted a proposal to amend Paragraph 6 of Article 37 of the Copyright Act by adding Items 2 and 3. The amendment prescribes that any copyright dispute arising from communication of sound or image originally broadcasted is subject to civil remedies only and the criminal remedies will be excluded. In other words, copyright disputes relating to the issue of secondary public broadcasting only involve civil remedies, and will not incur any criminal liability.
The Legislative Yuan passed the Amendment on 12 January 2010. Subsequently, the Amendment was promulgated on 10 February 2010 by the President.