Innovation minister John Halligan signed the Copyright Act 2019 into law towards the end of June, and has begun the process required to bring it into effect.

The Copyright and Other Intellectual Property Law Provisions Act 2019 aims to make it easier for creators such as musicians, authors, and photographers to better defend their creative works by allowing lower value infringement claims to go to the Circuit and District Courts.

It also introduces a text and data mining exception for non-commercial research that will facilitate the increased use of these research techniques.  

According to the minister (pictured) the exception “will have significant benefits for the research community in gathering and making greater uses of data, the results of which can be used to develop new products and services”.

Halligan's department listed some of the Act’s important provisions as:

In Association with

• Improving access to the Courts system for intellectual property claims, in particular to facilitate lower value IP infringement cases to be brought before the District and Circuit courts
• Extension of the existing copyright exceptions for education, to allow teachers to display works on a whiteboard to illustrate a point, or to provide education by means of distance learning and education over the internet, in line with the changing provision of education and training in Ireland
• Extension of the existing copyright exception for persons with a disability, to facilitating persons with a disability getting access to works or to use new technologies to adapt works to their needs
• The extension of the existing copyright deposit provisions relating to books, to facilitate the creation of a Digital Deposit on a voluntary basis
• Creating an exception for use of copyright works to allow for caricature, satire and parody
• Extending the concept of fair dealing in copyright works for purposes of news reporting
• In the context of photographs, making it an infringement to tamper with metadata associated with the photographic works
• Allowing libraries, archives and educational institutions to make a copy of a work in its collection for preservation purposes, and for such uses as exhibition catalogues.

The Act also amends the term of protection for copyright in designs and artistic works from a 25-year term to life of the creator plus 70 years, in order for Ireland to comply with international obligations.

The latter provision in EU and other legislation has been widely criticised as a grossly excessive measure favouring not so much individual creators but entertainment businesses and others, especially in the music industry, which have bought up back catalogues and other creative material over the decades and wish to keep exploiting them beyond any reasonable period.