Urheberrechte als Kreditsicherheit

Creative industries have a continually high demand for external capital but usually lack tangible assets that could serve as collateral. Instead, such companies might consider securing loans with intellectual property. If copyright is chosen to serve as security, this undertaking conflicts with the German Copyright Code and its strict protection of an author’s moral rights. Such protections are reflected, for example, in the necessity to obtain the author’s consent in order to transfer a licence, in the author’s right of revocation and several other provisions protecting the author against his licensee. It is not surprising that such safeguards turn out to be serious obstacles for the collateralisation of copyrighted works.
This thesis aims to analyse these limitations and to explore ways to overcome them by means of interpretation, contract design and legislation.