Like in most continental European countries, Austrian copyright law is conceived as authorrights, in the center of which is natural person who has created the work. This stands in contrast to the copyright system in Anglo-Saxon countries, the USA in particular, which consider intellectual property as material property and separate from the person which created the work. The original copyright owner is always a natural person (= author in the sense of creator of the intellectual work); legal entities can either be original owners of a related copyright law (“ancillary copyrights”) or the owners of individual (exclusive) (work) licenses derived from the author or (non-exclusive) (work) utilization permits.
Furthermore, Austrian copyright law embraces distinct copyright-personality laws, some of which are unrenounceable (such as the right to claim authorship, protection against relevant adaptations or the right to publish the contents of a work, etc.).
In compliance with an EU directive, the 70-year protection term post mortem auctoris generally applies in Austria. This protection term applies to films only following an amendment to the Copyright Law in 1996; the term commences the year following the death of the last-deceased member of the group of persons consisting of the director, the screenwriter, shooting-script dialogue writer or composer of the score. With regard to so-called “older films,” i.e. those produced before the law passed, more complex transitional regulations apply. A protection term lasting 50 years generally applies to ancillary copyrights, calculated as of the completion of the achievement protected from the date of completion of the work as long as the work was published within this 50-year period.
The latest 2003 Amendment to the Copyright Law, effective July 1, 2003, adjusted the Austrian Copyright Law to the European Union Information Directive, most notably, that the use of protected works in digital format (e.g. on the Internet) was regulated: a new law concerning interactive public availability was created, personal use was restricted, and new laws to prevent the circumvention of technological protective devices (Digital Rights Management) as well as to protect markings for electronic rights management (Information Rights Management) were introduced.