Lecture Prof. Bernt Hugenholtz on copyright, contracts and creator's protection across Europe

When a musician signs with a label or an author with a publisher, who actually has the upper hand? Legally, creators hold exclusive rights over their work—but in practice, the companies exploiting those works often call the shots.

In 2019, the EU sought to address this imbalance through the Digital Single Market Directive. Articles 18-23 of the CDSMD introduced a concrete set of protections for creators: the right to appropriate and proportionate remuneration, a transparency obligation requiring exploiters to share revenue data, a contract adjustment mechanism to renegotiate unfair deals, the right of revocation to reclaim works from inactive publishers, and an alternative dispute resolution procedure.

Prominent voice in European IP law

Bernt Hugenholtz will hold the lecture 'Regulating author’s contracts in the EU. The quest for fair remuneration in a world of digital monopolies' on fair remuneration in a world of digital monopolies. In the second part, a group of panelists will present their findings in relation to five countries.

Prof. Hugenholtz is a prominent voice in European IP law. He is Professor Emeritus of Intellectual Property Law at the University of Amsterdam and an adjunct judge at the Court of Appeals in the Hague. He is one of the founders of the Wittem Group—a collective of European copyright scholars that drafted the European Copyright Code—and co-founder of the European Copyright Society.

As former Director of the Institute for Information Law (IViR), he has shaped the field both institutionally and academically, and his influence extends into legislation: his inaugural lecture made the case for dedicated author contract rules, which were later enacted in Dutch law in 2015. He regularly teaches at leading law schools across Europe.

Prof. Hugenholtz began his legal studies right here at the University of Groningen, graduating in 1980.

Online access

You can follow the lecture online here

Program