Companies Parliament can decide on ancillary copyright for media

Large online services such as Google and X are to pay copyright fees in future when they display short excerpts from newspaper articles. Parliament can now decide on the controversial new ancillary copyright for media.

Keystone-SDA

20.06.2025, 12:06

20.06.2025, 12:56

SDA

The Federal Council adopted the dispatch on ancillary copyright on Friday. This concerns the use of so-called snippets, i.e. short texts or images created with journalistic services. They are not currently protected by copyright law, as the Federal Council wrote.

Accordingly, online services do not pay media companies any remuneration for the use of these texts. The Federal Council wants to change this and ensure that media professionals receive an appropriate share of the planned remuneration.

It is proposing that online services with an average number of users of at least ten percent of the Swiss population per year must pay the remuneration.