The preventive power of attorney as voluntary support measure to protect author's moral rights

This paper analyses the protection of author's moral rights that could take place through the person designated in preventive power of attorney. This is a case not specifically contemplated by the legislator, in which the exercise of the right by a third party takes place during the author's lifetime. Therefore, it is distinguished from the post-mortem-auctoris exercise regulated in articles 15 and 16 of the Spanish Copyright Act. At first sight, the inalienable nature of the author's moral rights would prevent their defence from being invoked by a person other than the author of the work. However, the defencelessness of these rights during the time in which the author is prevented from exercising them, together with the spirit of Spanish Act 8/2021, which prioritises voluntary measures to support the person with disabilities, would make the preventive power of attorney the ideal instrument to achieve the protection of the author's moral rights during the disability situation. However, the rights mentioned in article 14 of the Spanish Copyright Act differ from each other, so that a single answer cannot be given for all of them: a separate study of each of the author's moral rights is necessary.