International Law

Search Engine Copyright Exception Government Ordinance

By Karl-Friedrich Lenz

The new Japanese copyright exception for search engines gives copyright holders the right to opt out. That however is not very clear from the text of the law itself (I was confused about that when first reading it).

However, it becomes clear when reading the relevant Government Ordinance and the Culture Ministry Ordinance that were issued on December 28, 2009 and are published in Official Journal Special Edition (?????275.

Government Ordinance 299 introduces a new Article 7-5 in the Copyright Law Execution Ordinance (????????. That Article gives a definition of the term “search engine business”. In my translation, that definition is:

The standard for collecting, organizing and providing information made available for download under Article 47-6 of the copyright law (including the case of application under Article 102, Paragraph 1 of the copyright law. The same applies for number 2) is laid down as follows.

1. Collecting, organizing and providing information made available for download must be done automatically by a computer program.

2. Information for which the person defined in Article 47-6 of the copyright has prohibited the collection following the standard laid down by ordinance of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology must not be collected.

3. When trying to collect information made available for download the search engine finds that measures under the previous number are taken, that information must be deleted.

Full post as published by Lenz Blog on February 22, 2010 (boomark / email).