Authors and performers right to additional remuneration after the conclusion of the contract : A study concerning article 20 of the DSM-directive and Section 36 of the Swedish Contracts Act

Copyright contractual law consist of rules that regulate contracts within copyright law. One of the main characteristics of copyright contracts is that they are often characterised by differences in bargaining power between the parties. The weak position of authors has therefore become the subject of mandatory legislation in various respects. Recently, Article 20 of the Directive (EU) 2019/790 (DSM-Directive) incorporated such a rule. This article provides authors with a right to additional, appropriate and fair remuneratiom after the conclusion of the contract if their remuneration proves to be disproportionately low. That is, a right to obtain post-contractual remuneration through mandatory legislation. It is in theory possible to also achieve similar results by applying Section 36 of the Swedish Contracts Act. This paper will examine both of these rules. This constitutes an interesting area of law, but the detailed applications of the rules are still understudied. This paper therefore aims to take a holistic approach to the possibility for authors to obtain additional post-contractual remuneration through mandatory legislation. The study identifies several problems and ambiguities in the application and proposes solutions to these issues. The conclusion was that the requirements for applying Article 20 are generally to be seen as lower than Section 36 of the Swedish Contracts Act, while in theory it should also lead to higher remuneration for authors. However, Section 36 of the Copyright Act can be applied to a wider range of cases and to some extent addresses other circumstances. The addition of article 20 has either way improved authors right to remuneration as well as bargaining power. However, some of the other issues that authors face during the contract negotiations were not solved through the directive.