Copyrights

Original expression in a tangible form is a subject matter of Copyright. The Courts have finetuned the copyright subject matter criteria. The original expression with intellectual effort and a degree of creativity make copyright matter.

The dichotomy between intellectual property and industrial property is Copyright. Copyright is intellectual property but not industrial property. The union of Copyright and Industrial Property is known as Intellectual Property.

As an industrial property, Copyright is a negative right. It restricts the exploitation of copyrighted work without consent, acknowledgment, and against the spirit of the work. There are transferable and non-transferable rights in copyright. The economic rights are transferable. Moral rights are non-transferable. The economic right can be relinquished by the author. The transferable rights can be transferred by the first owner of the copyright through the assignment in writing.

The Copyright exists in literary, dramatic, artistic, music, sound recording, and cinematograph work. A computer program, per se, is considered a literary work. The Copyright also provides neighboring rights for performers, for performance in public, in literary, musical, and dramatic works. The right to perform in public subsists with the creator of the literary, dramatic, and musical work. The broadcasting reproduction right and performers’ right to their public performance is known as neighboring rights in copyright.

The Copyright term in literary, dramatic, musical, or artistic work subsists for the life of the author and sixty years from the next year from the death of the author. The copyright term in sound recording, cinematograph, Government work, or international organization work subsists for sixty years from the beginning of the calendar year next following the year in which the work was first published.