Legal Questions

Illustrations in online university publications

Basically, the same copyright issues need to be observed in online publication of the dissertation as in print-based publication. In order to avoid any difficulties with publishers - the possible rights holders of the illustrations which you wish to use - you should try to obtain authorisation to use these illustrations.

In practice this is simplified by the fact that Verwertungsgesellschaft Bild-Kunst grants photo rights to dissertation projects on behalf of many rights holders.

VG Bild-Kunst r.V.
Weberstr. 61
53113 Bonn
Tel. 0228-91534-0
Fax 0228-91534-39
E-Mail: info@bildkunst.de

There are, however, different categories of photographic rights: works of which the copyright holders (author and illustrator/photographer) have been dead for at least 70 years are no longer protected by copyright under §64 of the Copyright Act; there should be no difficulty publishing any illustrations contained in such works. Also, faithful reproductions of two-dimensional works in the public domain (e.g. historical works of art, paintings) can be used with no difficulty.

However, if the objects exist in the form of drawings of third parties, or if they are demonstrably museum arrangements, it is very likely that image rights or copyrights of third parties exist. In such cases the usage rights should be queried and reproduction authorisation should be sought. The work concerned is a dissertation, meaning that it should rarely be a problem to obtain authorisation, and fees for using the illustrations are seldom charged, or if so, are relatively low.

There is no obligation to pay in the case of a "quotation" as defined in §51 of the Copyright Act. The condition here is that the object is an original piece of academic (or popular science) work, i.e. not merely an uncommented collection of pictures, and the image must serve to explain the content, i.e. may not simply be an illustration. In cases where the work of art is extensively discussed and the extracts are restricted to a small number of images of the same artist, then a claim to quotation rights is likely to be viewed favourably.

In this regard, the following Internet publication from the Ministry for Schools, Science and Research of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia is recommended: Kompendium Multimediarecht (available only in German)

It is obligatory (or strongly recommended) to list picture sources in the thesis, yet it need not be over-complicated. The source does not have to be given beneath each individual picture; it is sufficient to include a full list in the appendix, where it is best to list the picture by page or figure number, including the source in each case.

Knowledge Base Copyright Law
Institute for Information-, Telecommunication- and Media Law (ITM), Münster