Re: copyright in Germany

[Marc Nieper-Wißkirchen]

Am Mi., 20. Mai 2020 um 00:15 Uhr schrieb Bruno Haible <address@hidden>:

> Marc Nieper-Wißkirchen wrote:

> If the code you write is not related to your job, that is, if you are not
> being paid to write it, then the "Nutzungsrechte" belong to you - regardless
> whether your employment contract says otherwise. This is guaranteed by
> Art. 2.(1) Grundgesetz. (*)
>
> Often it is clear whether something is related to your job. For example,
> if you have a manager that tells you what to develop. (*)
>
> If your employer is a university [1], things are less clear. In the past,
> some universities have been strict and claimed that the works of their
> professors and researchers belong to them. This has changed somewhat around
> 2000-2005: The slogan "public money - public code" has convinced at least
> some universities to allow the code that came out of research projects to
> be released under Open Source licenses. In any case, this topic is subject
> to negotiation between the professors/researchers and the university.

As far as I know (but I am, luckily, not a lawyer either), it is the
common legal opinion that Art. 5.(3) Grundgesetz implies that the
"Nutzungsrechte" are not being implicitly assigned from a professor to
the university ([2]). So the university cannot claim that some of my
works are theirs. In any case, I even have a letter from the
university saying basically this. Unfortunately, the FSF lawyers don't
accept the German text (I tried to contribute to GCC once) because
they don't have the manpower to verify it; now I have to persuade the
university lawyers to sign the FSF provided text.

> [1] 
> https://www.uni-augsburg.de/de/fakultaet/mntf/math/prof/alg/arbeitsgruppe/nieper-wisskirchen/

Correct.

Thanks,

Marc

--

[2] https://www.bmbf.de/upload_filestore/pub/Handreichung_UrhWissG.pdf