While the barrier is usually very low for fine art and protection is granted even for minimal creativity (dubbed "kleine Münze", literally "small coin" or "small change"),[2] there are extremely high standards for applied art to be reached for it to achieve copyright protection.
Previously this had not been possible, so that even "unrestricted" licences granted before the mid-1990s did not (and could not) include the right to use the work on the internet, which created considerable practical problems.
[citation needed] According to historian Eckhard Höffner the 1710 introduction of copyright law in what was then Great Britain and later in France acted as a barrier to economic progress for over a century, while Germany prospered in the same time frame due to the lack of copyright laws.
At that time Germany did not yet exist as a unified nation; and the many states that comprised the German territories were still primarily agrarian.
Prussia introduced a copyright law rather late, in 1837, but even then authors and publishers just had to go to another German state to circumvent its ruling.
Höffner argues that, as a result, there was a massive proliferation of books, fostering the spread of knowledge and laying the foundation for the country's eventual industrial ascendency.
In Germany, publishers had to sell cheaply to the masses in a competitive market, aside from producing luxury editions for the wealthy.
Höffner believes that the availability of bestsellers and academic works at low prices fostered a wide, educated readership; he also argues that the lack of copyright benefited the authors financially.
In the meantime, Höffner contends, Britain had lost its intellectual head start on the Industrial Revolution.
[19] The authorised person purchases the warranty to utilise the work in the granted way, separated into several types of use.
The copyright law protects an author regarding their intellectual and personal relationship to the work and the types of its utilisation, § 11 UrhG.
[32] The kinds of use listed in § 15 UrhG can be subdivided into several rights of use which again can be matched, each, with a corresponding type of use, so it is always possible to restrict a right of use in many different ways as long as the specification of the use of work makes clear the individuality of the type of use with respect to its economic and technical content.
[34] It was intended that the author should be protected to the best possible extent against an unlimited exploitation of their rights due to types of use which could not be foreseen at the time of conclusion of the contract.
[35] It was intended that the countervalue of granting rights of use for new types of use should always be secured for the author; they should be in the position of negotiating an appropriate fee arrangement.
[37] It is also decisive, inter alia, whether a large audience is targeted, whether separate distribution structures are created or whether the range of economic exploitation can be significantly expanded.
[38] Furthermore, it is also possible that a technically known but economically not yet relevant kind of use could be part of a contract if specifically named and explicitly agreed upon between the parties.
[47] According to its personal scope of application, § 31a UrhG affects solely contracts between the author or their legal successor and the right holder.
[48] In accordance with § 31a UrhG the author is entitled to grant rights of use or to contractually bind himself to do so, even if the type of use is yet unknown at that time.
On 1 March 2018, the Act to align copyright law with the current demands of the knowledge‑based society or Urheberrechts-Wissensgesellschafts-Gesetz (abbreviated UrhWissG) covering the fields of research and education came into force.