Copyright and related rights by reference to Italian law (Legge N. CXCVII)

Legge N. CXCVII of 1 September 2017 repealed Vatican City State's prior copyright statute, Legge N. CXXXII of 19 March 2011, and entered into force on 1 October 2017 (art. 8).

Vatican City State has no autonomous copyright code of its own scope: article 1 § 1 provides that, except as this law states otherwise, Vatican City State observes the copyright and related-rights legislation in force in Italy, including its implementing regulations, so long as that legislation is not contrary to divine law, the general principles of canon law, the Lateran Pacts, or an international agreement the Holy See has joined, and so long as it is applicable given Vatican City State's own factual and legal situation; article 1 § 2 provides that a future amendment to Italian copyright legislation is automatically received into Vatican City State's own law on the same terms.

The law's own additions to that imported regime are narrow: article 2 extends copyright and related-rights protection to the published texts of Holy See and Vatican City State laws and official acts; article 3 protects the writings, speeches, image, and voice of the Roman Pontiff, and of emeritus and deceased Pontiffs, against exposure, reproduction, or commercial use without the Secretary of State's consent where doing so would prejudice his honour or dignity, with the Secretary of State empowered to litigate those rights before Vatican and foreign courts; article 4 confines the right to photograph or otherwise reproduce Vatican City State's protected cultural property to the institutions that hold custody of it, for a 70-year term from first fixation; and article 5 vests copyright in works the Holy See or Vatican City State create or publish under their own name, for 70 years from first publication or from the author's death where named, with article 6 preserving moral rights of attribution and integrity regardless of any transfer of the economic rights.

Article 7 creates a Commission for Intellectual Property, chaired by the Assessor of the Secretariat of State, that coordinates administration of the imported regime and mediates disputes among the entities article 5 covers.

The law states no independent Vatican City State text-and-data-mining exception, quotation right, or database right of its own; whatever such a right or exception exists is only the one the imported Italian legislation itself provides, and its current content is a question for Italian law rather than for this statute's own text.