Copyright registration in Croatia. Croatia, officially the Republic of Croatia, is a country at the crossroads of Central and Southeast Europe. Croatia is classified by the World Bank as a high-income economy and ranks very high on the Human Development Index. Service, industrial sectors, and agriculture dominate the economy, respectively. Tourism is a significant source of revenue, with Croatia ranked among the 20 most popular tourist destinations. The state controls a part of the economy, with substantial government expenditure. The European Union is Croatia’s most important trading partner. Croatia provides social security, universal health care, and tuition-free primary and secondary education while supporting culture through public institutions and corporate investments in media and publishing. Accordingly, many businesses want to enter this market and one of the most important preparations a business needs to take before expanding to this country is to learn the procedure of copyright registration in Croatia.
Copyright in Croatia
Unlike other intellectual property rights such as trademarks, patents, industrial designs, plant varieties, etc., copyright does not need to be registered for protection but will be automatically protected from the time the works are created.
The creation must be visible in a certain material form, like content, quality, form, medium, language, published or unpublished, registered or unregistered.
Accordingly, whether registered or not, the copyright to the work will still be protected. However, copyright registration is still advised because early registration will give the author/owner of the work many advantages in the event of a dispute.
When unauthorized use of work occurs around the world, the owner of a work who has registered copyright in advance will not have to waste time and complicate matters with proving himself/herself to be the legitimate owner of the work.
Thereby, in order to avoid passivity, the owner of the work should make a copyright registration to protect their rights and interests when there is an infringement.
Copyright registration in Croatia
Croatia is a member country of The Berne Convention for Copyright since 1930.
The Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works (the Berne Convention) is an international agreement governing copyright. The agreement was first accepted in Berne, Switzerland, in 1886.
As Croatia is a contracting party of the Berne Convention, any work originating in Croatia will be given the same copyright protection in each of the Berne Convention member countries. The original from Croatia can be that the work is made and published for the first time in this country or if the author of the work is of Croatia ethnicity.
While in most countries, copyright protection is automatic as soon as the work existed in material form, copyright registration in Croatia is critical in order for the copyright owner to obtain evidence of copyright.
Evidence of copyright is extremely important even when copyright is obtained automatically.
When registering, the creation gets a date and a time stamp recorded, as well as information about the creation and proof of creative concept and development. This provides unambiguous proof of authorship and ownership that can’t be denied.
Proof of copyright is essential in an age when the publishing, dissemination, and theft of material is extremely easy with the exposure of the Internet.
If copyright registration is not made, copyright owners will lose a significant big amount of money and time attempting to fight copyright issues and prove ownership of the original work.
If the copyright owner has already registered for copyright protection to the IP office, they would have a strong legal foundation which would increase their chance of winning against the violating parties.
Documents for copyright registration in Croatia
To obtain copyright registration in Croatia, the author of the work needs to prepare the following documents:
- Declaration of copyright registration in Croatia;
- Two copies of copyrighted work;
- Documents proving the right to apply;
- Written consent of co-authors, if the work has co-authors;
- Written consent of the co-owners, if the copyright is jointly owned;
- Notarized identity card of the author or owner of the work;
- Power of Attorney, if the applicant is an authorized person;
- Notarized copy of the company’s business registration certificate (if the owner is a company).
The copyright law of Croatia
The 2003 Act replaced the 1991 Copyright Act. This in turn replaced the 1978 Yugoslav Copyright Act.
Recently, Croatia adopted a new Copyright Law which entered into force on 22 October 2021.
This law was created to implement the EU Directives 2019/790 and 2019/789 into the local legislation. There are many new changes to copyright according to the new law with the modern system, focusing primarily on digital ascension.
You can see a list of Croatia IP firms here.