Author's contract in the Albanian copyright law

• Author: Oltion Spiro
• Position: Faculty of Law, University of Tirana
• Pages: 91-98

ISSN 2410-3918

Acces online at www.iipccl.org

91

IIPCCL Publishing, Tirana-Albania

Academic Journal of Business, Administration, Law and Social Sciences Vol. 2 No. 1

March 2016

Author’s contract in the Albanian copyright law

PhD (C.) Oltion Spiro

Faculty of Law, University of Tirana

Abstract

The relation between the author and his/her artistic creation is very specific and at the same

time a strong one. Such relation defies any property and affective connection that an individual

may have with an object (Caron, 2011, 25). Copyright constitutes precisely the legal embodiment

of the author’s intimate relationship with his/her work. Copyright is a plurality of legal

provisions that belongs to the author of the work, in order to protect his/her ownership and

eventually the commercial exploitation of such work. In this context, the author, through

legal provisions and international conventions duly ratified by Albania, enjoys a relevant

legal arsenal in order to defend his/her artistic works so that such works may have a live of its

own (Vivant & Bruguière 2009, 23). One of these legal measures is the contract, which in legal

doctrine is well known as the author’s contract. By means of such contract, the author has the right

to distribute, reproduce, license or certify rights related to his/her artistic work. In this regard, the

contract is an irreplaceable tool in the hands of the author to distribute the work and to give it an

undeniable value, turning it into one of the most valuable intangible assets in civil circulation. The

contract of the author, as the name indicates it, is a contract that obeys to the rules of civil law with

respect to the quality of the parties, the characteristics of the object of the contract, its conclusion,

the determination of remuneration and the term of duration. On the other hand, it is undeniable

that the contract of the author contains rules which are not specifically contemplated by the Civil

Code, such as rules relating to the form, interpretation and existence of some sui generis contracts

provided in Law 9380 / 2005 “On copyright and related rights” (hereinafter referred to as “Law

9380/2005” or “Law on Copyright”) as well as in the Draft Law On Authors Rights (hereinafter

referred to “Draft Law”). From this point of view, this paper will analyze two key moments: the

fact that the author’s contract originates from the civil law principles and on the other hand the

fact that such contract has its own autonomy from such principles.

Keywords: Author, Copyright Law, Contract, Law, Civil Code.

Introduction

The author’s contract constitutes such legal mechanism that allows the author to put

into civil circulation his/her artistic work. Artistic works are defined by Law 9280/

2005 as any original intellectual of a natural person, materialized, regardless of the

form or mode of expression, which aims to touch human feelings”. From a practical

point of view, it involves the literary, visual, visual art and choreographic works

(Bainbridge, 1996, 25). The contracts are the main legal mechanism allowing the

circulation of a tangible or intangible object in the market; therefore they will have a

place of particular significance in the copyright field. The role of author’s contracts is

strongly related with the generation of huge profits from the circulation of artistic

works. In this regard, the contract provides the legal tools for protecting the works

for illegal use and at the same time, enabling the spread of such artistic work into the