REPUBLIC OF LITHUANIA
LAW
ON
THE LEGAL PROTECTION OF COMPUTER PROGRAMS
AND DATABASES
Chapter I
GENERAL PROVISIONS
Article 1. Relations Regulated by the Law
1. With regard to the specific nature of computer programs and databases as the subject matter of copyright, the Law shall regulate moral and economic relations arising in connection with the creation of computer programs and databases, their protection and use. Copyright norms shall be applicable to these relations if they do not contravene the provisions of this Law.
2. The legal protection provided by this Law shall not apply to the ideas, principles, algorithms and programming languages of the computer programs and databases.
Article 2. Definitions
As used in this Law:
computer program (hereinafter referred to as program) shall mean a set of commands (instructions), data and explanations expressed in a material form and intended for computers or other analogous devices in order to bring about a certain result. All other material produced while creating a computer program (description of a program or/and a problem, instructions for the user, etc.), also original sound and image expressions are also attributable to the program;
database shall mean a collection of data selected, arranged and systematised in such a way that the data needed could be accessed and processed by means of computer facilities;
adaptation shall mean adjustment to a concrete computer;
reproduction shall mean copying of a program or a database in any material form, also recording of a program or a database in a computer;
modification shall mean alteration of a program or a database not for the purposes of adjustment;
decompilation shall mean disclosure of the object code with the aim to establishing the source structure and coding of independently created programs;
publication shall mean making a program expressed or reproduced in an objective form available to an unlimited number of persons and on an unlimited territory;
use shall mean publication or reproduction of a program or a database and other related economic activities. Advertisements, information for teaching purposes and instructions for the user shall not be regarded as the use of a program or a data base.
Article 3. Objects of Legal Protection
1. Protection by copyright shall be applicable to all distributed and undistributed programs and databases expressed in a material form.
2. Protection shall be extended to all kinds of programs (also operating systems and program packages) expressed in various programming languages and forms, including the source language and the object code.
3. The same legal protection shall be extended to programs as to literary works and to databases - as to collections of works.
4. Legal protection extended to a database shall cover creative selection, processing and arrangement of the data. Where a database is made up of works protected by copyright it shall be necessary to observe the copyright of those works.
5. The author of a database shall not exercise copyright to the data in the database. Under the existing laws, other persons shall be entitled to select such data and create original databases.
Article 4. Criteria of Eligibility for Protection by Copyright
1. The author of a program or a database shall be a natural person who has created by his work a computer program or a database.
2. If two or more persons create a similar program or a database independently, each of them shall have copyright in the result of their work.
3. Recognition of copyright and its protection shall not be subject to depositing, registration of the program and of the database, or any other formalities.
4. The author or his successor in title shall be entitled to inform the public about his rights to the program or the database by using the copyright notice consisting of three elements: letter c in a circle or in brackets - © or (c), the name of the author or his successor in title, and the year of first publication of the program or a database.
Article 5. The Author's Successors in Title
The author shall be entitled to transfer by contract his economic rights to a program or a database. These rights may be inherited by the author's heirs. The persons who have acquired copyright in a program or a database by contract or succeeded to it by inheritance shall be called the author's successors in title.
Article 6. Joint Authorship
1. Copyright in a program or a database created by two or more persons shall belong to all the co-authors, irrespective of whether such a work is a complete whole or whether it consists of parts, each in its own right. Each co-author shall be entitled to copyright in the part of the collective work created by him/her and having an independent value. A part of a program or a database, each program in a program package shall be regarded as having an independent value if it can be used independently.
2. Persons who have provided technical assistance to the author of a program or a database shall not be regarded co-authors.
3. The co-authors shall jointly dispose of their rights to a program or a database, and their mutual relations shall be determined by general agreement. Disputes arising between them shall be settled in court. Disputes related to remuneration shall be settled in court, and the remuneration shall be apportioned according to the share of creative contribution by each co-author.
4. A co-author shall not, without a reasonable ground and against the will of the other co-authors, withhold his permission for making available to the public or using his/her program or a data base. Disputes arising in connection with this shall be settled in court.
Article 7. Right to a Computer Program or a Database Created in the Execution
of One's Duties or on a Contractual Basis
1. The author of a program or a database created in the execution of one's duties or on commission shall be entitled to exercise moral rights.
2. The economic rights to a program or a database ( the right to get, use and dispose of the author's remuneration) shall be enjoyed by the employer or the client unless otherwise provided in the contractual agreements.
3. Remuneration for the use of a program or a database created in the execution of one's duties or on a contractual basis, shall be established in the contractual agreement on the basis whereof the program or the database have been created.
Article 8. Moral Rights
1. The author of a program or a database shall be entitled to the following personal rights:
2) the right to the name - the right to choose which name of the author and how it will be indicated in publicating and using the program or the data base ( the real name, the pen-name, or no name, i.e.anonymously);
Article 9. Economic Rights
The author of the program or the database or his successor in title shall be entitled to an exclusive right to perform or to authorise other persons to perform the following actions:
4) to modify the program or the database, including their translation from one language into another;
Article 10. Succession to Economic Rights
l. Upon the death of the author of the program or the database, his economic rights shall be inherited in the manner prescribed by law by the successors to his rights (heirs) the rights whereof are established in Article 9 of this Law.
Article 11. Term of Protection
1. The term of protection by copyright shall extend from the moment of creation of a program or a database for the entire life of the author and fifty years after his death , beginning from the first of January of the year following the author's death.
2. The term of protection by copyright in a program or a database of joint authorship shall be deemed to begin from the first of January of the year following the death of the last surviving co-author.
3. The term of protection by copyright in a pseudonymous or anonymous program or a database shall extend for fifty years from the day it has been made available to the public. If the personality of the author of a program or a database made available to the public pseudonymously or anonymously does not give rise to any doubts or if the author makes his real name known during the period referred to in this paragraph, the term of protection by copyright shall be established in the manner prescribed in paragraph 1 of this Article.
Article 12. Contractual Agreements on the Use of Computer Programs and
Databases
1. A program or a database may be used only subject to a contractual agreement with its author or his successor in title.
2. A contractual agreement on the use of a program or a database shall be made in writing. It shall indicate the subject matter of the agreement, the procedure of payment, the rights and duties of the contracting parties, the conditions of use of the program or the database, the term, and the liability of the parties. When copies of programs or databases are sold at trading enterprises, purchase-sale agreements shall be made verbally.
3. When programs or databases are sold on a mass scale or when authorisation is given to other persons to use them, typical conditions of their use may be indicated on the copies of programs or databases, on the packaging( “package license”). These conditions shall be obligatory for the person who acquires a program or database.
Article 13. Limitations on the Rights of the User of a Program or a Database
1. The user of a program or a database, without a prior consent of the author or his successor in title, shall have no right:
1) to reveal to other persons the essence of the program or the database if this has not been made public by the author or his successor in title;
2) to allow other persons to familiarise themselves with the program or the database which is being used or reproduced before the author or his successor in title has made it public;
4) using the program or the database to create the same or a similar in its content computer program or database or their description;
2. It shall be prohibited to use, to offer or to keep, with the aim of selling, transferring, importing, exporting, hiring or licensing programs or databases acquired in the manner referred to in subparagraphs 3,4, and 5 of paragraph 1 of this Article without a prior authorisation of the author or his successor in title.
Article 14. The Rights of the User of a Program
A person who is a lawful user of a program, without a prior consent of the author or his successor in title (unless provided otherwise in the agreement) shall be entitled:
2) to adapt the program, i.e. to adjust it to concrete computer facilities if it cannot be used without this adjustment, also if this adjustment makes it possible to use it more effectively;
3) to make or instruct others to make a copy of the program which can be used in the event of loss, wearing-out of the original or if it becomes unfit for use for other reasons. This copy shall not be made for other purposes and at the expiry of the term of a right to the program it shall be destroyed.
Article 15. Decompilation
1. A person who is a lawful user of the program, when he wants to establish its coding and structure, shall have a right without a prior consent of the author or his successor in title to decompile the program or instruct others to decompile it:
1) if such information is necessary for providing interaction of the program with another program (programs) utilised by the user;
Article 16. Free Transfer of a Computer Program or a Database
The owner of a lawfully obtained copy of a program or a database shall have a right to sell the copy or transfer it in any other way to another person by right of ownership without a prior consent of the author or his successor in title and without remuneration to them unless otherwise provided in the contract. In this case the former owner of the copy of a program or a database shall exhaust his rights to a transferred program. His rights shall pass to the new owner.
Article 17. Infringement of the Rights to a Program or a Database
1. Civil liability of physical and legal persons shall arise in the event of infringement of the norms set out in Articles 4 - 16 of this Law, also in the following cases:
1) when illegal copies of programs or databases produced without a prior consent of the author or his successor in title, are imported into or exported from the Republic of Lithuania;
2) when illegal copies of programs or databases are put into commercial circulation, if the infringer knew or was supposed to know that the said copies were illegal;
3) when an illegal copy of a program or a database is obtained, if the person obtaining it knew or was supposed to know that the copy was illegal;
Article 18. Protection of Rights to a Program or a Database
The author of a program or a database or his successor in title is entitled to institute court proceedings claiming:
2) restitution to the state prior to the infringement of the right, prevention of infringing actions or actions threatening to infringe a right;
Article 19. Restitution to the State Prior to the Infringement of the Right
and Prevention of Infringing Actions
1. To prevent infringing actions, the court may order seizure of the copies of programs or databases which have been illegally made, imported into the Republic of Lithuania, which are in commercial circulation, and which have been illegally acquired.
2. Copies of programs and databases (including their material media) which have been illegally acquired, imported, circulated commercially and which have been used in performing illegal actions for profit, shall be forfeited by a court order. The court may also order the forfeiture of the equipment, devices and materials used for the purposes of illegal profit, or their turning over to the injured party as a compensation for the damage.
Article 20. Appraisal of the Damage
1. The court may obligate the infringer to pay the actual damages to the infringed party ( the proceeds lost as a result of the infringement, and the expenses incurred).
2. After paying the actual damages to the infringed party, the remaining proceeds of the infringer received through production, use and sale of the program or database copies, may be confiscated by a court order.
3. In those cases when the plaintiff cannot compute precisely the amount of losses suffered as a result of the infringement, the court, taking into account the complexity and significance of the program or the database, may award to the plaintiff from 500 to 10,000 Litas for the use of each illegal copy.
4. If the rights of the author of a program or a database or of his successor in title have been infringed for enrichment, the court may order to increase the damages up to 50,000 Litas.
5. The scope of moral damage shall be established in accordance with paragraph 2 of Article 539 of the Civil Code of the Republic of Lithuania.
Article 21. Other Forms of Liability
Persons who have infringed the rights of the authors of programs or databases or of their successors in title may be subject to another liability in accordance with the laws of the Republic of Lithuania.
I promulgate this Law passed by the Seimas of the Republic of Lithuania.