Copyright
What is Copyright?
Copyright (or author’s right) is a legal term used to describe the rights that creators have over their literary and artistic works. Works covered by copyright range from books, music, paintings, sculpture, and films, to computer programs, databases, advertisements, maps, and technical drawings.
What can be protected using copyright?
Exhaustive lists of works covered by copyright are usually not to be found in legislation. Nonetheless, broadly speaking, works commonly protected by copyright throughout the world include:
- literary works such as novels, poems, plays, reference works, newspaper articles.
- computer programs, databases.
- films, musical compositions, and choreography.
- artistic works such as paintings, drawings, photographs, and sculpture.
- architecture; and
- advertisements, maps, and technical drawings.
Copyright protection extends only to expressions, and not to ideas, procedures, methods of operation or mathematical concepts as such. Copyright may or may not be available for several objects such as titles, slogans, or logos, depending on whether they contain sufficient authorship.
What right does Copyright give me? What are my rights as author of a work?
- economic rights, which allow the rights owner to derive financial reward from the use of their works by others; and
- moral rights, which protect the non-economic interests of the author.
- its reproduction in various forms, such as printed publication or sound recording.
- its public performance, such as in a play or musical work.
- its recording, for example, in the form of compact discs or DVDs.
- its broadcasting, by radio, cable, or satellite.
- its translation into other languages; and
- its adaptation, such as a novel into a film screenplay.