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Guibault, Lucie --- "Relationship between Copyright and Contract Law" [2009] ELECD 179; in Derclaye, Estelle (ed), "Research Handbook on the Future of EU Copyright" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2009)

Book Title: Research Handbook on the Future of EU Copyright

Editor(s): Derclaye, Estelle

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781847203922

Section: Chapter 20

Section Title: Relationship between Copyright and Contract Law

Author(s): Guibault, Lucie

Number of pages: 26

Extract:

19 Overlap/relationships between copyright
and other intellectual property rights
Antoon Quaedvlieg



Introduction

The question of overlap in the copyright acquis
It is a common experience in the copyright field, and a joy for many a lawyer,
that one or more different intellectual property (IP) regimes may cumulate
with copyright in granting protection to a certain `product'.1 Of course, much
depends on the national system of IP law, and to what extent it leaves room
for concurrence. In some respects, especially as far as industrial design is
concerned, the Netherlands can be regarded as a laboratory for questions of
overlap, and to illustrate some points we have taken the liberty of relying on
examples taken from Dutch practice.
The essential problem of concurrent protection by several IP regimes is
conflicts as to what should be reserved for the public domain: which law has
priority where one IP law intends to grant an exclusive right on certain works
or uses and another law expressly intends to keep those works or uses free. On
a practical level, the main issues of overlap in a copyright context are, on the
one hand, copyright's own limits on entering the technical domain and, on the
other hand, the extent to which trademark law must show restraint to enter the
copyright domain or to artificially `prolong' the term of protection of a work
after the expiration of copyright.
Overlap between copyright and other intellectual property rights is a
subject which up to now has ...