Pavel Koukal

Free Licenses and Recodification of Civil Law in the Czech Republic

This chapter provides general information on the legal status of Free and Open Source Software Licenses (e.g. GNU General Public License, the MIT License) and other alternative licenses (e.g. Creative Commons) under Czech law. The issues are discussed under both contract law and copyright law following the recodification of Czech civil law through the adoption of the new Czech Civil Code. The discussed topics concerning contract law include, inter alia, the legal nature of F/OSS and alternative licenses (i.e. whether they are to be construed as contracts or unilateral instruments), formal requirements, standard terms and conditions, language issues, special rules of interpretation, disclaimers of warranty and liability and the termination of granted licenses. The issues of copyright law include, inter alia, the interpretation of broad and unspecific terms in license contracts, questions concerning unknown modes of use of a work at the time of the conclusion of the license agreement, revocation or rescission rights in copyright legislation, sub-licensing, statutory rights for equitable remuneration, participation in the distribution of revenues by collection societies, the right to modify the copyrighted work and moral rights, and remedies in the case of termination of the licensee’s right. Other issues, e.g. the competition law aspects of F/OSS licenses, are also discussed.

Collective Administration of Graphical User Interfaces (GUI) in the Light of the BSA Decision

In this paper the author addresses the issue of collective administration of graphical user interfaces according to the impact of the CJEU decision in BSA v. Ministry of Culture on the case-law in one of EU Member states (Czech Republic). The author analyses the decision of the Czech Supreme Court where this Court concluded that visitors of Internet cafes use graphical user interface actively, which represents relevant usage of a copyrighted works within the meaning of Art. 18 the Czech Copyright Act. In this paper, attention is first paid to the definition of graphical user interface, its brief history and possible regimes of intellectual property protection. Subsequently, the author focuses on copyright protection of graphical user interfaces in the Czech law and interprets the BSA decision from the perspective of collective administration of copyright. Although the graphical user interfaces are independent objects of the copyright protection, if they are used while running the computer program the legal regulation of computer programs has priority. Based on conclusions reached by the Supreme Administrative Court of the Czech Republic in the BSA case, the author claims that collective administration of graphical user interfaces is neither reasonable nor effective.