Legal Developments in Norwegian Copyright Law

By Harald Irgens-Jensen[*]Professor at the Faculty of Law, Department of Private Law, Centre for European Law, University of Oslo.

The following article gives an overview of Norwegian legislation and court decisions in the copyright field since the last Nordic Copyright Symposium in September 2022.

1. Legislation

No amendments to the Copyright Act of 2018 have been passed since the last symposium. In June 2023, Parliament adopted a new Book Act (‘bokloven’, lov 16. juni 2023 nr. 64). The act’s purpose is to ensure diversity in the literature available to the public in all parts of the country. This is mainly sought to be achieved through a system of fixed prices on books (article 5 of the Act). Furthermore, when a publisher has made a book available through a distribution service, the publisher will be obliged to deliver the book to all bookstores and retailers across the country that order the book, on paper or as audiobook. And the bookstores and retailers are obliged to deliver said books to customers who ask for them (art. 6 and 7). These obligations to deliver arguably interfere with copyright holders’ right of deciding when and how to make their works publicly available.