This is what is provided for in Article 47 of the Italian Law No. 182 of 2 December 2025 (in force since 18 December 2025). A provision that stands out for two distinct reasons.
The first concerns legislative technique: the statute contains “provisions for the simplification and digitalisation of procedures relating to economic activities and services for the benefit of citizens and businesses” – a topic that is rather distant from copyright and related rights (the field in which the new rule is actually located).
Given this already peculiar placement, one might expect that the rule concerning photographs would be included in the section dedicated to measures supporting economic activities (namely photographers, photo agencies, photo archives, etc.). Instead, another surprise: the extension of the protection term to 70 years for photographs is intended, according to the legislator, to simplify “administrative procedures in favour of citizens” (in fact, the provision is included in Title II of the Law).
But the intrinsic peculiarities of the proposal go much further.
With its introduction, the term of protection for exclusive rights over photographs (previously twenty years) has been extended to seventy years from the moment the photograph is taken.
This means that, since the law enters into force on 18 December 2025, photographs of the celebrations for São Paulo’s victory in the FIFA Club World Cup Final (18 December 2005) are no longer in the public domain, because they are protected until 2075, while a shot taken today would be protected until 2095.
This is not due to any retroactive effect of the new provision, but because the longer terms of protection apply (as a general rule) to materials protected by related rights (specifically simple photographs) that were not already in the public domain.
The new provision also creates a category of related rights (lasting 70 years, applicable only to photographs) whose scope and starting point differ significantly from the standard regime. For example, the rights of audiovisual producers are protected for 50 years from the creation of the audiovisual work (unless it is published for the first time within that period, in which case the term runs from first publication).
Comparing the duration of protection with audiovisual works highlights another noteworthy consequence. Under national law, each individual frame of an audiovisual work is protected as a simple photograph. Returning to the example of the public celebration for the football match: the related rights over the video recording are protected in Italy until 2050, and each individual frame was protected until this year (2025). Under the new law, however, it becomes protected until 2075. In other words, the single frame enjoys longer protection (in temporal terms) than the entire audiovisual work.
Photographs, protected for 70 years from the moment of shooting, would still not be assimilated to creative photographic works, not even with respect to duration. This is because photographic works (i.e. creative photographs) are protected (in addition to moral rights) by full economic rights lasting 70 years from the death of the author/photographer.
Thus, the national peculiarity remains (shared within the EU only by Germany and Austria), stemming from the 1941 legislator’s reconsideration of the artistic dignity of photography, which resulted in the coexistence in Italy of two distinct protection regimes: one for creative shots and another (substantially different) for those that are somewhat less creative.
These different systems often give rise to interpretative uncertainties and disputes. A situation that, prima facie, does not seem particularly “simplified” by the introduction of the new provision, nor “in favour of citizens”, nor indeed of photographers. Not to mention the companies that publish and use photographic images, for whom the new term of protection (and its application) will have undoubtedly significant effects.
(Beatrice Cunegatti)
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