Compensation for commercial breaks in films on TV
Author: Michael Plogell, Wistrand Advokatbyra

The Svea Court of Appeal has ordered TV4 to pay compensation to two film directors for infringing their moral rights by interrupting the showing of the directors’ films for commercials. When the TV-channel showed the films in 2002, it interrupted each film respectively three times for commercial breaks for about five minutes each. The directors claimed that they had not accepted commercial breaks and that these infringed their moral right as authors to their respective works. The court concluded that it was not found that the directors had accepted the breaks and that the assumption of TV4 that the authors had accepted the breaks was negligent. Consequently the court held that the breaks did infringe the moral right of the directors and TV4 was ordered to pay compensation to the directors.