The Many Metamorphoses of Related Rights in EU Copyright Law: Unintended Consequences or Inevitable Developments?

Neighboring rights have always been neglected by copyright scholars, despite a steady increase of their economic relevance and market role across the decades. The situation has changed in the past two decades when, in response to the epochal shifts to which such rights have been subject, commentators have transferred their focus to the legislative and judicial evolution of neighboring rights. These changes, in fact, have had a substantial impact on the texture of EU copyright law and of the common core of EU Member States’ laws, which may – or may not – represent the beginning of a new era for the relationship between copyright and related rights. To understand the drivers and purpose of the various legislative reforms and the CJEU’s responses in the field, and the challenges they have posed to the consistency and internal balance of the EU copyright system, it is essential to analyze their roots and key features. To this end, this article will offer a brief overview of the legislative path that led from the Rome Convention to the debate preceding the Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market (CDSMD), with a focus on the introduction of sui generis rights and ancillary copyright (Section II). It will then comment on the nature and features of the new press publishers’ right under Art. 15 CDSMD, focusing on its strengths and pitfalls (Section III). The statutory analysis will be coupled with a comment on the four ‘waves’ of the CJEU’s judicial practice (Section IV), leading to a brief assessment and conclusions on the way forward (Section V).