Copyright Software

On May 14 1991 the Council of the European Communities adopted the directive on the legal protection of computer programs. Pursuant to this directive the Member States "shall bring into force the laws, regulations and administrative provisions necessary to comply with this directive before 1 January 1993". Article 1 of the directive states that the Member States shall protect computer programs by copyright, as literary works. At the time of publication, not all the Member States had complied with the directive, although they did have bills pending. Specialists from each Member State of the EC describe the copyright provisions of their country, both in general and with respect to software, and then provide detailed descriptions of the way in which their country has enacted or intends to enact the directive. Most of the contributions contain a translation of the relevant statutory provisions. Chapter 1 of the book desrcibes the provisions of the directive in detail. Thus the reader should be able to obtain an overview of the protection of computer programs in the EC.