[pp.int.general] no copyright levy for printers: decided by German Supreme Court

[Reinier Bakels]

For those of you who read German: www.bundesgerichtshof.de -> Entscheidungen -> Aktenzeichen I ZR 94/05
A similar decision is I ZR 131/05: for multifunction machines there is a levy indeed (for this decision there is only a press statement, the full decision is not yet available in PDF form).
Cases about levies for copying machines (I ZR 206/05, 8.5.2008) and PCs (I ZR 18/06) are forthcoming.

The reason why there is no copyright on printers is that printers by themselves would be unfit to make copies. For the same reason, there is a levy on schanners (which does not seem entirely logical to me).

I guess Germany is a forerunner in levies, and such developments are really frightening, even though the printer decision was OK.
reinier
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