Italian court rules exhibition catalog is collective work protected by copyright

A 2017 Milan court ruling established that an exhibition catalog containing descriptive sheets written by multiple authors under a curator's direction qualifies as a collective work under Italian copyright law (Articles 3 and 7 of Law No. 633/41). The curator is considered the author of the overall work, while individual contributors retain rights to their own texts. The court compared the catalog to a newspaper, where the director is deemed author of the collective work. Separately, Italian courts have repeatedly held that reproducing photographs of artworks in a catalog requires authorization from the copyright holder (typically the artist), not the owner of the physical work, unless rights have been expressly transferred. The article, written by lawyer Raffaella Pellegrino, was published in Artribune Magazine #44.