Facts
The cooperative PRO LITTERIS, which manages copyrights to literary works, sued the Swiss Confederation (PTT Operations) for a declaratory judgment that the PTT Operations may only copy entire works of the authors it represents with its permission for the PTT press service.
The PTT Operations had published a weekly internal magazine "ptt-intern", in which entire newspaper articles by authors represented by PRO LITTERIS were also reprinted. PRO LITTERIS saw this as a violation of the reprographic rights of its members and filed a lawsuit.
Considerations
The Federal Court first found that PRO LITTERIS has standing to sue, as in individual cases, particularly the article by Dr. Uchtenhagen, the reprographic rights have been assigned to it.
Furthermore, the Court stated that the PTT Operations cannot rely on the exception provision of Art. 25 para. 2 of the Copyright Act in favor of the press, as "ptt-intern" is not a press review, but an internal documentation aid.
The Court also did not see the requirements of Art. 22 of the Copyright Act for permissible private use without a profit motive as…