A friend asserted the other day that the German state retains ownership of all books published in Germany.
Google isn’t helping me… this can’t be right? Can it?
A friend asserted the other day that the German state retains ownership of all books published in Germany.
Google isn’t helping me… this can’t be right? Can it?
No - neither of the intellectual property nor of the physical books themselves.
Your friend might confuse this with the issue of legal deposit - a publisher of a book in Germany must provide two copies to the federal central library, and one or two copies (depending on state law) to a library specified by state law. But this refers to the copies, not to the intellectual property. I believe publishers in various other countries also have such a duty to provide copies to specified libraries.
There are specific cases where the state has acquired intellectual property by confiscation, the most prominent one being Hitlers’s intellectual property which has been confiscated by the state of Bavaria.
Sweet, thanks, tschild.