The Rule of Shorter Term - Copyright Law

Now to highlight some of the difficulties understandng the copyright situation of works that are out of copyright in other countries, but still under copyright in Germany. Germany decided to reject the rule of shorter term. This means that in most countries when a piece of work is out of copyright in it's country of origin it is out of copyright in the other country, even if that country has a longer copyright law. However Germany opted out of this law in most situation, especially pertaining to other EU works and US works. In German there is a blanket copyright law for 70 years p.m.a (after the person's death)

Here is an excerpt from the wikipedia page on the Rule of Shorter Term:

Situation in the European Union

In the European Union, copyrights have been harmonized amongst the member states by the EU directive 93/98/EEC on harmonising the term of copyright protection. This binding directive, which became effective on July 1, 1995, has raised the duration of copyrights throughout the union to 70 years p.m.a. It also includes in its article 7 a mandatory rule of the shorter term for works from non-EU countries. Within the EU, no comparison of terms is applied, and—as in the Berne Convention or in the UCC—existing international obligations (such as bilateral treaties) may override this rule of the shorter term. Directive 93/98/EEC was repealed and replaced by Directive 2006/116/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 12 December 2006 on the term of protection of copyright and certain related rights.^[19]
Germany extends the non-applicability of the rule of the shorter term to all members of the European Economic Area in §120 of its Urheberrechtsgesetz.^[20] It also does not apply the comparison of terms to U.S. works. In a case decided on October 7, 2003 by the Oberlandesgericht of Hesse in Frankfurt am Main, the court ruled that a U.S. work that had fallen in the public domain in the U.S. was still copyrighted in Germany. The court considered the rule of the shorter term inapplicable because of the bilateral copyright treaty between Germany and the United States, which had become effective on January 15, 1892 and which was still in effect. That treaty did not contain a rule of the shorter term, but just stated that works of either country were copyrighted in the other country by the other country's laws.^[18]
The EU member states implemented Directive 93/98/EEC^[21] and Directive 2006/116/EC^[22] in their national law; however, it is not guaranteed that such national implementations are either "comprehensive or in conformity" with the Directives.

EU case law

Even before article 7 of directive 93/98/EC explicitly prohibited the application of the rule of the shorter term amongst EU countries, the comparison of terms within the EU was not allowed. The Treaty instituting the European Community, which in its original version became effective in 1958, defined in article 7, paragraph 1, that within the union, any discrimination on grounds of nationality was prohibited. (Since 2002, when the treaty was amended by the Treaty of Maastricht, this is article 12, paragraph 1.) Application of the rule of the shorter term is such a discrimination, as it results in granting domestic authors longer copyright terms for their works than foreign authors from other EU countries.
This issue was settled decisively in 1993 (i.e., two years before directive 93/98/EC became effective) by the European Court of Justice (ECJ) in what became known as the Phil Collins decision. In that case, Phil Collins sued a German phonogram distributor who was marketing records of a concert Collins had given in the U.S. German law of that time granted German performers full neighbouring rights, and in particular the right to prohibit the distribution of recordings made without their consent, regardless of the place the performance had occurred. At the same time, German law granted the same right to foreign performers only for their performances that had occurred in Germany. The ECJ decided on October 20, 1993 that this was a violation of the non-discrimination clause of article 7 of the EC treaty. It also clarified that the non-discrimination clause was indeed applicable to copyright.^[23]
The court stated that

In prohibiting "any discrimination on the grounds of nationality" Article 7 requires each Member State to ensure that persons in a situation governed by Community law be placed on a completely equal footing with its own nationals and therefore precludes a Member State from making the grant of an exclusive right subject to the requirement that the person concerned be a national of that State.^[24]