Skip to main content

Digital Course Reserves

Would you like to make copyright protected materials available to the participants of your course?

Since the coming into force of the Act to Align Copyright Law with the Current Demands of the Knowledge-based Society (Urheberrechts-Wissensgesellschafts-Gesetz – UrhWissG) in 2018, the former provision on digital course reserves in section 52a of the German Act on Copyright and Related Rights (UrhG) is replaced by section 60a UrhG.

The
Main Conditions

For the purpose of illustrating for teaching, you

What may I make available into electronicthe formparticipants onattending my courses?

Section 60a allows educational institutions to use protected material to a non-commercialcertain basis:

  • upextent to 15support percentteaching. ofWorks athat have already been published work
    • may
  • illustrations,be individualreproduced, articlesdistributed, frommade available to the same professional or scientific journal, other small-scale workspublic and out-of-printpublicly worksreproduced inwithin full
    • certain
limits.
Materials

Articles from newspapers or popular magazines may notcan be made available in full.both “Small-scaledigital works”(eg meansTeams) printedand worksanalogue up(print) formats.

Examples of permitted uses in teaching include presentations in lectures, physical distribution to 25 pagesstudents and videosthe provision of materials on password-protected platforms such as Teams.

What requirements must be met?

Use in accordance with section 60a are only permitted if it serves to support training and musicteaching. upUse is therefore only permissible in order to 5make minutes.

Thelearning materials maymore onlyunderstandable and easier to grasp; use for entertainment purposes is not permitted. The acts of use must be madelimited available

  • to teachers and participants atof the respective events. The provision of digitised teaching materials must be limited to the participants of the respective event –and e.g.this must be technically ensured, ie the data must be password-protectedprotected. onYou Teams
    • can
  • tplimit teachersthe number of users by using Teams.

    Teachers and examiners atof the same educational establishment,institution may share and pass on copies between themselves.

    Permitted uses are still restricted to specific limits:

    • Up to 15% of a published work may be used.
    • tpIf thirdthe personsmaterial insofarconsists of illustrations, individual articles from specialist periodicals or scientific journals, other works of minor scope or out-of-print works, they may be used in their entirety.
      • Texts are works of small size if they are not longer than 25 pages or musical works and cinematographic works not longer than 5 minutes.
    • Only one single contribution may be taken in full from each journal.

      Please note: Press products such as general-interest magazines (so-called kiosk magazines) and newspapers are excluded from this servesregulation, only 15% of an article may be used here.

    • Film works may also be used in extracts of up to present15 lessons or lectures or the results of tuition or training or the learning outcomes at the educational establishment.%.

 

Back to top