Belgium: Copyright

Copyright Comparative Guide for the jurisdiction of Belgium, check out our comparative guides section to compare across multiple countries

It is now clear that EU Member States must afford copyright protection to designs or "works of applied art" if the harmonized conditions are met, regardless of the country of origin of these works or the nationality of the author.

The emergence of deepfake technology, particularly within the music industry, has sparked significant debate and concern. Deepfakes, which are synthetic media generated using AI...

Chances are you have already interacted with generative AI – whether by prompting ChatGPT to write a poem about the unbearable lightness of being on a Thursday night, or by generating images of "Pikachu riding a horse in Tuscany, ukiyo-e style" with Dall-E.

Since 1 August 2022, Directive (EU) 2019/790 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 17 April 2019 on copyright and related rights in the Digital Single Market and amending Directives 96/9/EC and 2001/29/EC (‘DSMD') has been transposed into book XI of the Belgian Economic Law Code.

In today's ever expanding digital application landscape, lagging legislation is no longer the exception. Therefore pre-internet / online applications legislation often needs an evolutionary or teleological interpretation to accommodate these new developments.

The case will now go back to the national court, which must deliver a decision in line with the ECJ's interpretation of the Directive.

On 3 June 2016, the Court of Appeal of Brussels denied the Belgian Association for Authors, Composers and Publishers the right to collect remuneration for communication to the public from internet service providers.

On 26 July 2016, the Commission made legally binding the commitments offered by Paramount Pictures as it considered that they adequately addressed its concerns regarding specific contractual clauses restricting passive sales.