iCommons Switzerland

["Christian Laux" <christian.laux AT openlaw.ch>]

Dear Katja,
Dear Marcus

Thank you for your postings.  We just sent the final draft to Creative
Commons International.  We will keep you informed about the further
development as soon as we can reliably predict the availability of the Swiss
License text.

We published the text of the first draft last summer in order to start
discussions.  We received valuable inputs, both on- and off-list (among
others from the Swiss Collecting Societies, important players within the
Swiss Copyright System, and other legal experts).

During the translation process we consequently pursued a strategy of a broad
discussion of the license draft.  This is of high importance since the first
draft will be the basis for the subsequent versions in German and in the
other national languages.  We are convinced that a thorough preparation of
the CH-German text will make it easier and finally more efficient to come up
with the CH-French and CH-Italian licenses.

As far as your posts are not answered yet, please find my comments below:

> > Also, these licences per country, how does it work? Is it based on where
> > you live, what nationality you are?
>
> The idea is that you choose the country's license where you want to
> protect a work. If you are sitting in Geneva and wrote a text which you
> want to put online, you would choose the Swiss license (if there would
> be one...) if you are somewhere else you choose anoter country's
> license. -- And if your country's license does not exist you can choose
> any, but preferrably one of a country which is (legally) close to yours.
> In (y)our case, that could be Germany.

The author's nationality is irrelevant for choosing a license text.  Under
Swiss law only the text of a license is important in determining your rights
and obligations, irrespective of the language the license is written in.
Therefore, when choosing a license, it is important to read the text as a
whole as there might be slight formal or legal differences (e.g. choice of
law-clause).  You might want to use the appropriate US-license until the
corresponding Swiss License is available.  Otherwise a choice of foreign
law-clause might become applicable resulting in Swiss law not (or no longer)
governing your license contract.  If this is desirable or not should be
analyzed depending on your needs.

Best,
Christian Laux

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