On Wednesday 10 February 2021, Luxembourg's Office for Intellectual Property (Office de la propriété intellectuelle - OPI) and the Ministry of the Economy launched a public consultation on the transposition of the European Union (EU) Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market.

The public consultation aims to meet the specific needs of all interested parties in the context of the transposition of Directive (EU) 2019/790 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 17 April 2019 on copyright and related rights in the Digital Single Market. The stakeholders mainly targeted by this public consultation are rights holders, users, collective management bodies and companies.

Context

Digital technologies have radically changed the way content is produced, distributed and viewed. The need for legislative framework to reflect and guide these changes led to the establishment of a new European directive on copyright and related rights in the Digital Single Market.

The “Copyright Directive” is thus aimed at modernising certain aspects of the legal framework for copyright and related rights, in order to take account of technological progress in the field of digitalisation and new distribution channels for protected content. The directive also aims to harmonise more generally certain aspects of copyright and related rights in the European Single Market.

Objective of the public consultation

Adopted on 17 April 2019, the new European directive must now be transposed into the national law of EU Member States. In Luxembourg, the Ministry of the Economy has prepared a preliminary version of draft legislation. The public consultation aims to engage in dialogue with stakeholders in order to ensure that the transposition of the new provisions of the directive into Luxembourg national law are (as far as possible) in line with their specific needs. The objective is thus to guarantee a sufficient balance between the interests of rights holders, individuals and businesses in the specific context of Luxembourg.

All interested stakeholders are invited to participate in this public consultation, which is open until 2 April 2021, by sending their contribution to the following email address: droitdauteur@eco.etat.lu. The preliminary version of the draft legislation can be viewed online. In parallel with this public consultation, an interministerial consultation is also underway.

The OPI will then analyse and assess all submitted feedback in order to finalise the draft legislation which will then follow the usual legislative procedure.