Regarding copyright protection we have an interesting case here.
Decades go, an artist made a work.
Meanwhile he did that, it was photographed. By another artist.
The artist doing/performing this original artistic work died, decades ago.
Now, his widow claims the urheberrecht => the copy right of these photos. She argues, since these photos are pictures of the artistic work of her late husband, the copy rights of these photos should be hers, as well as the copy right of the *original* artistic work of her late husband is hers, too.
The cour decision was that she is right. All copy rights of all of these photos showing the original artistic work of her deceased husband are belonging to her. The artist who did these photos was sentenced to hand the photos over to her (as far as I understood it).
Now the second round begins.
If this court decision stays true, than the results will become far-reaching : Then ANY artist will be able to condemn ANY photograph who is taking pictures of artistic works to hand over the copy rights and/or the taken pictures to the artist of the original work - or the widow/widower or any relative left behind.
And "artistic work" can be defined in quite a lot of ways : Not only sculpture (like in this case), but also movies (photos taken from the set), paintings, even architecture … The list can grow.
And this is something that really lets me shudder. Where is the end in that ?
Besides, the artist was Joseph Beuys.
