Directive on certain permitted uses of orphan works adopted

On 25 October 2012, the Council adopted the Directive 2012/28/EU of the European Parliament and the Council on certain permitted uses of orphan works.

Orphan works are copyright works that are still protected under copyright, however, their authors cannot be identified. The directive requires the Member States to permit libraries, educational institutions, museums, archives, film and phonogram achieves as well as public-service broadcasting organizations to make those works available to the public and reproduce them with the purpose of digitalization, making available, indexing, cataloguing, preservation or restoration. Before a work or phonogram can be considered an orphan work, a diligent search for the right holders in the work or phonogram. The directive also sets the principle of mutual recognition of the status of the orphan work between Member States. The directive needs to be transposed into national legislation by 29 October 2014.