Principles of Intellectual Property Rights
Intellectual property rights include amongst others copyright and neighbouring rights. Copyright protects creators and their creations. Neighbouring rights protect performers.
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Contact Inez Adriaensen
Last updated on 22.12.2025
Copyright for creators
Copyright prevents you to just copy or display other people’s work without permission.
Copyright also ensures that an author can earn money from the use of their creation. For example, musicians can earn some money when their music is played on Spotify or on the radio.
Copyright is involved as soon as two conditions are met:
- The work is original: it is an intellectual creation bearing the creator’s personal mark.
- The work has a tangible form (e.g. a text, musical score, choreography etc.). An idea that only exists in your head – however brilliant it may be – is not covered by copyright because it does not have a tangible form. An idea that you write down or record in some other way, however, is protected.
A creator or author doesn’t need to do anything to apply copyright. Copyright arises automatically as soon as the two aforesaid conditions are met.
The same work can have more than one author. A dance production might be a creation by a choreographer, light designer, composer and set designer, for example.
Neighbouring rights for performers
Neighbouring rights protect performing artists, such as singers and musicians recording music for a CD or dancers on stage in a performance that is being recorded. They are not the ‘authors’ or creators of the work of art, but they are performing it as artists, and for that performance they are protected by neighbouring rights. This only concerns recordings or reproductions: musicians who are playing live music are not protected by neighbouring rights.
A person may hold both copyright and neighbouring rights at the same time. A composer who writes songs and also performs them, for example. Or a choreographer who creates a dance production and dances in it as well. Or an actor writing their own theater monologue as well as performing it.
Neighbouring rights are collected via what is known as equitable remuneration.
How long do these rights apply?
Works are protected by copyright until 70 years after the death of the author (or of the longest-living author if there are several). After that, the work enters the public domain.
The term of protection for performing artists (neighbouring rights) expires 50 years after the date of the performance.
To give a specific example: Mozart’s scores may belong to the public domain (since he died more than 70 years ago), but that does not automatically mean that you can play his music in your cafeteria for free. Perhaps it is a recent recording by an orchestra, and there may still be neighbouring rights to it?
Moral rights and economic rights
Authors and performers benefit from two types of rights: moral rights and economic rights.
Moral rights or personal rights are rights attached to the person of the author or performing artist. They allow the author to choose when a work is made public, to object to changes or adaptations to the work etc.
Economic rights ensure that an author or performing artist can earn money from the so-called ‘exploitation’ of a work. These rights are often managed by associations such as Sabam or SACD.
Exceptions
Theoretically, nobody can simply copy, use or display a work protected by copyright. But there are a few exceptions to this rule.
The use of works in private or family circles is almost always permitted without payment. But there are also flexible guidelines for libraries, for the use of works in education, in caricatures, parodies and pastiches.
More information or questions?
- Cultuurloket has extensive information about Copyright royalties on their website (in Dutch).
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