Royalties on Printers

CK - Washington.   In 2001, the German Supreme Court in Karlsruhe, Bundesgerichtshof, ruled in favor of copyright royalties payable on scanners, and the revised copyright act extends the payment obligation to printing euqipment and other gear suitable for the reproduction of copyright-protected material, see Kochinke, Royalty Societies,, November 25, 2007. On December 6, 2007, the court concluded that the existing German copyright statute does not create royalty obligations on printers. The court analyzed the current statute--which will be replaced on January 1, 2008--and found no indirect payment obligation in its §54a (I)1 that applies to equipment not designed for copying material. The court determined that printers by themselves are not copiers; in conjunction with scanners, they could operate as a chain of tools to reproduce protected material. In that case, a reproduction fee is already paid on the scanner …