Photocopying copyright

By Pittaluga Abogados

Uruguayan Police performed fifteen copyright raids in several informal photocopying business locals after the University Culture Foundation (FCU for its Spanish acronym) presented a complaint for copyright infraction and violation of Intellectual Property law.

All the businesses were installed opposite of the Law School of the University of the Republic, Uruguay´s public state university, in downtown Montevideo. The place is well-known for photocopying diverse academic material and the practice has increased steadily in last years due to lack of controls, creating a false idea on consumers that no fault, crime or misconduct is being committed.

Problems rose steadily since August when different organizations claimed that not only pages, extracts or chapters but full books were being photocopied. That significantly affects sales of original books and therefore the work of authors because plenty of both students and professors of primary, secondary and tertiary education levels acquire photocopied and not original material for economic reasons.

The Uruguayan Book Chamber assisted to the Education and Culture Commission of the House of Representatives claiming for actions and measures to take place: "We had come into a point in which professors come to class with photocopies on their hands no matter the school, college or university where they teach. It´s clear the editor and author work is being stolen".