Bulgaria Amends Copyright Law

Amendments to the Bulgarian Law on Copyright and Related Rights entered into force on December 1, 2023. The amendments transposed Directive (EU) 2019/790 on copyright and related rights in the Digital Single Market (the DSM Directive) and Council Directive 93/83/EEC on copyright and related rights in satellite broadcasting and cable retransmission (the CabSat Directive) into Bulgarian national law.

The most significant changes are the following:

• Additional rules and regulations on broadcasting, transmission, and retransmission of works have been adopted, in harmonization with the CabSat Directive, keeping up with emerging technologies and new services such as simulcasting and catch-up TV;

• The liability regime regulated by the widely debated Article 17 of the DSM Directive is now implemented, meaning that content-sharing service providers are now obliged to obtain permission from rights holders when offering electronic access to copyrighted works uploaded by users, with an elaborate set of exceptions and conditions;

• ‘Exceptions‘ (uses that don‘t require the right holder‘s authorization) have been elaborated: among others, caricature, parody, and pastiche are now explicitly included in this category, along with a coincidental inclusion оf a work in another material; further, a number of exceptions and limitations have been implemented for uses of text and data mining technologies, illustration for teaching in the digital environment and for the preservation of cultural heritage;

• The 10-year maximum restriction on the term of license agreements has been abolished;

• In terms of remuneration for copyright and neighboring right holders, ‘appropriate and proportionate’ has become the new statutory standard of remuneration and new contract modification mechanisms have been adopted;

• A new revocation mechanism has been introduced – if the work was not exploited in the first two years, authors who signed exclusive licensing agreements can now, under specific conditions, opt to revoke the exclusivity of the agreements;

• There are new transparency and reporting obligations for licensees: they should now, with some exceptions, give an account of the work’s use to the respective authors or performers, including in the event of sublicenses

• The regulation of publishing contracts now covers contracts with authors of literary translations;

• The author of a publicly funded scientific literature work now reserves the right to publicize that work in educational or scientific repositories for non-profit purposes once it has been accepted for publication by a publisher, as long as they mention the publisher;

• Neighbouring rights over press publications are introduced for their publishers;

• Mediation rules and procedure have been expanded.

By: Kliment Markov

For more information, please contact Kliment Markov at our Bulgaria office.