Under most national laws the copyright will be owned by the author but transferred to a public authority by contract. Some Member States, such as Belgium and Portugal, envisage copyright in works created by employed authors being assigned to the employer, whilst in other Member States copyright in the works of employed authors is vested in the employer.
Exceptions allowing works to be used in judicial proceedings are common.
Speeches to political meetings or legislative assemblies are frequently excluded from protection, although many laws preserve the rights in respect of collections of such speeches to the author. Ho other legislation addresses the issue. As indicated in chapter 7, it is thought this could be a source of contention in the future. It is therefore assumed for the purposes of this study that the laws developed for conventional media apply mutatis mutandis to electronic media and so the survey of national laws can be read as generally applicable. The copyright status of the publications of the Institutions of the European Union is far from clear.