Information on Copyright Law

The copyright shall belong to the person who has created the work (author). If the work was created by several authors, the authors shall exercise their rights jointly, except when the parts of the common work can be used independently. In this case the rights can be exercised independently regarding the respective individual part (common work [C.A. Art. 5]); the authorisation of all authors is required, however, if any part of this common work is wanted to be joined with a different work. If it is impossible to separately determine the individual rights of the authors (collective work [C.A. Art. 6]), the copyright shall be transferred to the natural or legal person or the economic company without legal entity as a successor-in-title at whose initiative or under whose instructions the work was created and who published it in his own name. The copyright of a collection, if the selection, arrangement or editing of its content is of individual and original nature (Collection of works [C.A. Art. 7]) shall belong to the editor.

The protection of copyright belongs to the author from the time of the creation of the work and no application or registration at any authority - or payment of fees pertaining thereto - is needed in this respect.

The author's moral rights [C.A. Chapter Two, Art. 10-15] cannot be assigned. As a fundamental rule, the Act does not allow the assignment of the economic rights [C.A. Chapter Three, Act. 16-31] the economic rights can, however, be inherited and, in certain cases defined by the Act, it is possible to assign them. The Act allows the assignment of economic rights in software programmes [C.A. Art. 58-60], and databases [C.A. Art. 60/A-62], and works ordered for publicity purposes [C.A. Art. 63]; in the case of cinematographic creations [C.A. Art. 64-66] there is a legal presumption that the author shall assign the rights of use and of the authorisation of the use to the producer.

If the creation of the work is the author's duty under an employment contract, the economic rights shall be transferred upon the employer by force of law. In these cases the law prescribes special rules on the remuneration the author is entitled to and on the exercise of the moral rights.

Moral rights and economic rights

The authors's rights are composed of the entirety of the so-called moral rights and the so-called economic rights. According to the moral rights [C.A., Chapter Two, Art. 10-15], it shall be the author's exclusive right to disclose the work, to withdraw it from the public, to have his name indicated on the work and to prevent any distortion, mutilation or any other modification of the work, which would be prejudicial to the author's honour or reputation.

According to the economic rights [C.A., Chapter Three, Art. 16-32], it is exclusively the author who can give authorisation for the use of the work in ways defined by the Act, i.e. for its reproduction, its distribution, its public performance, its communication to the public by broadcasting or in any other manner, its retransmission, its alteration and its exhibition. The content and the conditions of such forms of use are defined by the Act. The author is entitled to remuneration for the use of the work and he can waive it only by an express statement to that end; in certain cases the law may exclude the right to waive the remuneration.

A special element of the economic rights is the so-called reprographic remuneration [C.A. Art. 21-22], which is due to the author whose works can be reproduced by photocopying or in like manner on paper or on like carrier, i.e. by reprography. Companies producing, importing reprographic devices or operating reprographic devices for a consideration are obliged to pay the remuneration to the rightholders. The list of the devices used for reprography is defined by a special decree of the Government [Government Decree No. 158/2000. (IX. 13.) on the Determination of the Range of Devices used for the Purposes of Reprography] and the extent of the remuneration shall be determined by the Hungarian Alliance of Reprographic Rights.

Term of copyright protection

As a fundamental rule, the author's rights enjoy protection in the author's lifetime and for 70 years counted from his death. After the death of the author, the rights may be exercised by the inheritors of the author. In the case of works created by joint authors, in the case of cinematographic creations and when the author cannot be identified, the term of protection shall be counted in a special manner (see C.A. Art. 31).

Limitations of copyright: cases of free use

In certain cases the law makes it possible to use the author's works without the author's authorisation or the payment of remuneration. The use of this kind is called by the law "free use" [C.A., Chapter Four, Art. 33-41]; free use is for example the citation, the use for private purpose or the use in schools for tuition. Free use is allowed only in the case of works which were already published and only to the extent when it does not prejudice the normal use of the work, does not prejudice unduly the legitimate interests of the author and meets the requirements of fairness and does not focus on purposes incompatible with those of the free use. The Act generally specifies further conditions of the free use (e.g. the indication of the author's name, the exclusion of making a profit through the use).

Licence agreements

On the basis of a licence agreement, the author may authorise - for a consideration - the use of his work. The legal provisions concerning licence agreements are contained in the Copyright Act [C.A., Chapter Five, Art. 42-57]. The Act regulates publishing agreements and licence agreements concerning software and cinematographic creations as special types of agreements. Besides copyright provisions, the provisions of the Civil Code relating to agreements [Law No. IV. of 2013. Art. 6:1-6:214 ⁣] shall also be applied to licence agreements.

Considering their economic role, the Act prescribes beyond the general rules special provisions for software programmes [C.A. Art. 58-60], for databases [C.A. Art. 60/A-62] and for works ordered for publicity purposes [C.A. Art. 63]. The differences relate primarily to the role of the works objects of property. In the case of these three genres of works the economic rights can be transferred. In the case of software and databases, it is not compulsory to lay down the licence agreement in writing and the general rule, which protects the author being in employment and according to which the author is entitled to a due remuneration if the employer gives licence to a third party or the author, in the case of the employer's acquisition of rights, is entitled to the remuneration that he would be lawfully entitled to when the right of use has been transferred, will not be valid. In the case of software and databases, the Act specifies also special rules relating to the cases of free use.

In the case of cinematographic creations and other audiovisual works [C.A. Part Two, Art. 64-66] special rules are needed because creations of this kind are the joint works of several co-authors. In order to making it possible and easy to exercise the rights, the Act rules that the authors shall transfer their economic rights to the producer of the film in compliance with the contract concluded for the creation of the cinematographic work. The protection of authors is ensured by the provision according to which certain entitlements shall not be transferred - e.g. the "empty cassette fee" [C.A. Art. 20], the "rental fee" [C.A. Art. 23(6)], and the "cable television fee" [C.A. Art. 28] - and the authors are entitled to remuneration for each way of use.

The rightholders of visual creations [C.A. Art. 67-71⁣] i.e. creations of fine art, artistic photography, architecture, applied art and industrial design and designs of engineering structures) are entitled to special moral and economic rights besides the general rights. One of the special rights is the right of exhibition [C.A. Art. 69], according to which the owner of the creation of fine art, artistic photography, applied art and industrial design shall make the creations available to the author for purpose of exhibition and the owner is not allowed to exhibit these creations without the authorisation of the rightholder. A further special right of the creators of original creations of fine art or applied art is the so-called droit de suite [C.A. Art. 70], according to which the author is entitled to royalty payment when the proprietary rights in the creation are transferred through an organisation engaged in commercial activities.

Besides the copyright protection for original creations, the copyright law provides protection for performances, which do not concern the creation of original works, but the communication of already existing creations or other materials to the public. In these cases some kind of economic investment is typically found behind the performances. The performances of this kind are protected by the Act as 'rights related to copyright' [C.A. Part Three, Art. 73-84/G] and the content of the entitlement is defined by prescribing special rules in relation to copyright protection. The range of these rules encompasses the so-called neighbouring rights (the protection of performers, phonogram producers, radio and television organisations and film producers) [C.A. Chapter Eleven, Art. 73-84] and the rights of producers of databases [C.A. Chapter XI/A, Art. 84/A-84/E].

It is a special feature of the rights related to copyright that in several cases their exercise is not possible individually (e.g. in the case of the transmission of sound recordings). In these cases the enforcement of rights is possible through the so-called collective management of rights which is regulated in the Act No. XCII of 2016 on collective management of copyright and related rights

The term of protection [C.A. Art. 84] of rights related to copyright is different from the term of copyright protection; in the case of neighbouring rights the protection lasts 75 years counted from the putting into circulation or broadcasting of the performance or the work, and in the case of databases it lasts 15 years from the date on which the database was made available to the public or was completed.

The rights provided for the holders of rights related to copyright may not influence in any manner the protection of authors'rights concerning literary works and creations of art.

 According to the Act XCIII of 2016 on Collective management of copyright and related  the collective management of rights shall mean the enforcement of copyright and rights related to copyright which are individually non-exercisable due to the character or circumstances of use, and which are, therefore, exercised by organisations established by rightholders for this purpose. Within its competence of the collective management of rights, a collecting society shall

Collecting societies performing the management of copyright and related rights in Hungary

The C. A. and other statutes provide for a large variety of possible means of enforcing the authors' rights. If the law is not complied with, i.e. an infringement of rights has occurred (whether in regard to the moral rights or to the economic rights of the author), the rightholder can enforce civil law consequences [C.A. Art. 94], criminal law consequences [Criminal Code, Articles 384-387], or can initiate the implementation of customs measures [C.A. Art. 97]