Neighbouring rights: in search of a dogmatic foundation. The press publishers’ case

Abstract

The European Commission proposal for new neighbouring rights for press publishers comes in the wake of a general trend of creating new “neighbouring rights”, as is the case, for instance, with sports events. Increasing recourse to neighbouring rights for the protection of different subject matter reveals that the underlying basic concepts are rather vague, calling for careful reflection on the legal nature of such rights and their relation to copyright. This paper proposes to analyse whether protection of press publishers’ investment in producing and circulating news may be a task for intellectual property and precisely for neighbouring rights. After having highlighted the lack of a rationale for introducing press publishing neighbouring rights, tangential territories of law (i.e. copyright law, sui generis database protection, competition law and trademark law) will be identified as relevant in this field.