Related Rights of Press Publishers and Their Limitations under the EU Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market

This article analyses the new European Union (EU) Directive on related rights of press publishers. These are the rights granted to publishers to reproduce press publications for public consumption. It covers five basic issues: press publisher as rights holder, permissions for a person or an entity to use press publications, scope of exclusive rights granted to press publishers, "fair use", and protection of authors of works in a press publication. Due to the unclear wording of Art 15 of EU Directive 2019/790, the burden of its interpretation, mainly concerning the exceptions to a press publisher's exclusive rights, has already been transferred to the Court of Justice of the European Union. As a result, this article argues that there is the distinct possibility of EU Member States, who have already adopted this Directive, in future, being subject to different and less acceptable interpretations of the Directive to the ones they originally agreed to.