3.1 Author

The original author of a work is the person who created the work. Under the Swiss Copyright Act, only ‘natural persons’ (human beings, not an organisation or corporation) , can be original authors, Art. 6 Copyright Act (CopA). Minority, mental maturity and support by a guardian are irrelevant; children, for example, can also be authors.

Authors do not necessarily need to create a work under their real name. Anonymous authors or those who created a work under a pseudonym are also authors. Only authors can decide whether and how they want to be mentioned in the work.

Authors can also create a work on behalf of someone else (e.g. ghostwriters), in which case, they are still the author – there is no such thing as ‘proxy authorship’.

Authorship and GenerativeAI

AI-generated content is not considered an intellectual creation and lacks authorship, as a human being does not make it. Nonetheless, ethical standards call for transparent disclosure whenever such content is generated by AI, including clear identification of the specific tools employed.

GOOD TO KNOW

Perception of a work

‘Perception of a work’ simply means to take notice of a work, i.e. reading, looking at, listening to a work, etc. (Hilty, Urheberrecht, 2011, 128). This is always permitted.

Other parties involved in copyright

Logically, copyright does not only address the author. Several parties have an interest in a created work:

The author creates the work and possibly also wants to be paid for their work;
Agents who are known as mediators of copyrighted work help authors to make their work available to the public (e.g. publishing houses). As mediators usually require authors to assign rights to them, they are also owners of rights;
Users of a work (or users) wish to ‘consume’ the work, i.e. either just enjoy the work, which is termed perception of a work (e.g. listen to, look at, read), or use the work in some other form (e.g. reproduce, distribute).

FAQ

3.1-1 A student is working on their master’s thesis. Does the university automatically acquire the copyright in the master’s thesis?

No, the copyright can only originate with the student.

3.1-2 A writer is mandated to write the biography of a prominent politician. However, the prominent politician is described in the book as the author who wrote the biography (“ghostwriter”). Who is the author of the biography?

The writer is the author. This person created the work.

3.1-3 For a project, magazine articles should be digitised and indexed by applying the principles of computational linguistics (a software ‘reads’ the words in the articles to collect and analyse text data). Does this qualify as perception of a work?

No, perception of a work only means that a natural person (human being) is taking notice of a work (in this case reading a work), not a computer.