Religious poverty and author’s rights. An approach to the problematic confluence of Canon Law and Spanish civil legislation

Abstract

In Spain, religious men and women in the Catholic Church, become, as any other citizens, simply by being authors of a literary, artistic or scientific work, and through the dictates of the Law for Intellectual Property, owners of an entire gamma of rights. The production of a literary, artistic or scientific work is considered, in the eyes of Canon Law, in canon 668, §3, CIC 1983, as a result of the personal labour, and the ownership and the royalties that it may generate are attributed to the Institution to which he or she belongs. We are faced, thus, as a result, with two different law codes, each governed by a different logic, which converge on the same type of persons, religious men and women, and on the same object, author’s rights, although in diverse ways.