The conference “One year after the amendment of the Law on Copyright: experiences and perspectives” was held on 26 April, which is World Intellectual Property Day. Event brought together researchers and practitioners from various fields of copyright and related rights to discuss the changes in the Law on Copyright and Related Rights.
The event was opened with welcoming remarks by the Dean of VU Law Faculty, assoc. prof. dr. Haroldas Šinkūnas, and the Head of the Public Information and Copyright Policy Group of the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Lithuania, Deividas Velkas. Assoc. prof. dr. H. Šinkūnas spoke about the possibilities, importance and challenges of artificial intelligence and thanked the audience for choosing VU Law Faculty as a place for development. D. Velkas stated that the Ministry currently has two goals: to strengthen and modernise copyright protection by adapting it to the digital environment and to raise public awareness of the use of non-infringing content.
The first keynote speech was delivered by dr. Ramūnas Birštonas, Professor at the VU Law Faculty. He argued that national copyright and its development is possible and necessary, and pointed to the adoption of a new Copyright Law, or even a separate Intellectual Property Code, as one of the most important tasks for the future. He also discussed the challenges to copyright arising from artificial intelligence and possible solutions to them.
Dr. Goda Ambrasaitė-Balynienė, Judge of the Civil Cases Division of the Supreme Court of Lithuania and Associate Professor at Mykolas Romeris University, shared her experience in the courts. According to the expert, the most frequent problem faced by the judicial system is what is a work? According to the current concept of a work, an object can be either a work or not a work – there is no gradation in this concept.
Other speakers presented copyright from the perspective of both copyright holders and users, and the changes that have occurred in the activities of cultural heritage institutions. The event focused on blocking access to copyrighted content and analysed the responsibilities of online content sharing providers. Some of the speakers commented that it is premature to discuss changes to the Copyright Act a year after the fact, as problems become apparent after a longer period of time.
The conference was organised by the Faculty of Law of Vilnius University.
The project is funded by the Lithuanian Council for Culture, under the programme “Protection of Copyright and Related Rights 2022-3” (LKT contract reg. No. S/AGT-26(6.89)/2022).
