Category:Sculptures by Alexander Calder in Switzerland

Switzerland[edit]

OK

According to article 27 of the Copyright Act (de/fr/it), works installed at or on publicly accessible places or ground may be pictured, and such pictures may be offered for sale, sold, transmitted, or otherwise published. The image must not be three-dimensional and it must not be possible to use the picture for the same purpose as the original.

The works must be permanently installed, but for the purposes of the law, "permanent" means a fixed installation which may be temporary -- time limited -- but not "accidental", e.g. due to transport of the work. However, it is controversial whether, for instance, a sculpture located in a public park during a temporary exhibition is covered by FOP. The work may also be of a transient nature, e.g. ice sculptures. The commentary by Barrelet/Egloff also explicitly mentions a "wrapped building" installation by the artist Christo (in Berne, 1968) as an example of a work where freedom of panorama does apply; in a similar case, however, Rehbinder/Vigano explicitely disagree with this assumption.

Whether Swiss freedom of panorama also applies to works in publicly accessible interior spaces is a matter of controversy among legal scholars as well. Sandro Macciacchini, legal counsel of the Swiss Press Association, expressed in 1999 the opinion that it applies to rooms used for transit purposes, such as railway stations or passageways. In a law review article of 1997, the same author argued that based on the French text of the provision, "une voie ou une place accessible au public", the law probably only covers works under open sky, but he noted that freedom of panorama also extends to works that can be seen from a public space even if they are located on inaccessible ground. According to the legal commentary by Barrelet/Egloff (3rd ed. 2008), "the inside of a building, the staircase, its rooms" aren't "allgemein zugänglich" (publicly accessible) in the sense of the law, even if the building is publicly owned, and therefore freedom of panorama doesn't apply to works in interior spaces; others find themselves mostly in agreement with this position.