Copyright

:For copyright issues in relation to Wikipedia itself, see .

Other aspects

Transfer and licensing

Copyright may be assigned or transferred from one party to another. For example, a musician who records an album will sign an agreement with a record company in which the musician agrees to transfer all copyrights in the recordings to the company in exchange for royalties and other terms. One might ask why a copyright holder would ever give up his rights. The answer is that large companies generally have production and marketing capabilities far beyond that of the author. In the digital age of music, music may be copied and distributed for a minimal cost through the Internet, however the record industry attempts to provide the service of promoting and marketing the artist so that the work can reach a much larger audience. A copyright holder does not have to transfer all rights completely. Some of the rights may be transferred, or else the copyright holder may grant another party a non-exclusive license to copy and/or distribute the work in a particular region or for a specified period of time. A transfer or licence may have to meet particular formal requirements in order to be effective; see section 239 of the Australia Copyright Act 1968 (Cth). Under Australian law, it is not enough to pay for a work to be created in order to also own the copyright. The copyright itself must be expressly transferred in writing.

Related Topics:
Internet - Record industry

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Copyright may also be licensed. Some jurisdictions may provide that certain classes of copyrighted works be made available under a statutory license (e g. musical works in the United States). This is also called a compulsory license, because under this scheme, anyone who wishes to copy a covered work does not need the permission of the copyright holder, but instead merely files the proper notice and pays a set fee established by statute (or by agency decision under statutory guidance) for every copy made. Failure to follow the proper procedures would then result in the copyist being vulnerable to an infringement suit. Because of the difficulty of following this process for every individual work, copyright collectives or collecting societies and performing rights organizations (such as ASCAP, BMI, RIAA and MPAA) have been formed to sell the rights to hundreds of works at once. Though this market solution bypasses the statutory license, the availability of the statutory fee still helps dictate the price per work that collective rights organizations charge, driving it down to what the avoidance of procedural hassle would justify.

Related Topics:
License - Statutory license - Copyright collective - Collecting societies - Performing rights organization - ASCAP - BMI - RIAA - MPAA

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Brief comparison with other forms of intellectual property

In general, copyright law covers the creative or artistic expression of an idea, patent law covers inventions, trademark law covers distinctive signs which are used in relation to products or services as indicators of origin, registered designs law covers the look or appearance of a manufactured or functional article and the law of confidential information protects secret or sensitive knowledge or information.

Related Topics:
Invention - Sign - Products - Services

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Although intellectual property laws are theoretically distinct, more than one type of IP may cover the same item or subject matter. For example, in the case of the Mickey Mouse cartoon, the image and name of Mickey Mouse would be the subject of trademark legislation, while the cartoon itself would be subject to copyright. Titles and character names from books or movies may also be protectable as trademarks while the works from which they are drawn may qualify for copyright.

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Another point of distinction is that a copyright (and a patent) is generally subject to a statutorily-defined fixed term, whereas a trademark registration may remain in force indefinitely if the trademark is periodically used and renewal fees continue to be duly paid to the relevant jurisdiction's trade marks office or registry. Once the term of a copyright has expired, the formerly copyrighted work enters the public domain and may be freely used or exploited by anyone, as courts in the United States and the United Kingdom have rejected the doctrine of a common law copyright. Public domain works should not be confused with works that are publically available. It is completely incorrect, for instance, that simply posting material on the Internet places the material into the public domain such that anyone can freely copy, adapt or commercially exploit the work. Apart from anything else, the material may have been posted by someone who had no right to do so, let alone the power to waive copyright.

Related Topics:
Registry - Public domain - United States - United Kingdom - Common law copyright

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Copyright notices

In some jurisdictions, in order to obtain protection when a work such as a book or movie is created the work generally should contain a copyright notice. This notice comprised a letter c inside a circle (i.e., ©), or the word "copyright", followed by the year(s) of the copyright and the name of the copyright holder. Certain alternative formats were permitted for certain types of works. A copyright notice serves to inform any potential users that the work is copyrighted.

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This requirement was generally the result of previous United States statutory requirements, but since 1989 in the U.S., the use of copyright notices has become optional. With the exception of a small number of countries which still require notices to be on works, this requirement is generally optional except for works which were originally created before the particular country became a member of the Berne Convention (the members of which are collectively known as the Berne Union).

Related Topics:
1989 - Berne Convention

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A copyright notice is no longer required for a work to be covered by copyright in jurisdictions which have acceded to the Berne Convention. In most jurisdictions a work may be copyrighted from the moment of its creation regardless of whether or not it bears a copyright notice. However, the existence of a copyright notice may make it easier to claim certain damages for infringement in legal proceedings, as a defendant may be presumed to have ignored the notice and intentionally infringed copyright.

Related Topics:
Damages - Infringement - Legal proceedings - Defendant

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The symbol, ©, is Unicode symbol 00A9 in hexadecimal, and can be entered into (X)HTML as ©, ©, or ©

Related Topics:
Unicode - Hexadecimal - X - HTML

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Year of copyright

The year(s) of copyright are listed after the © symbol. If the work has been modified (i.e., a new edition) and recopyrighted, there will be more than one year listed.

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"All rights reserved"

The phrase, All rights reserved, was a formal notice that all rights granted under existing copyright law are retained by the copyright holder and that legal action may be taken against copyright infringement. It was provided as a result of the Buenos Aires Convention of 1910, which required some statement of reservation of rights to grant international coverage in all the countries that were signatory to that convention. While it is commonplace to see it, this notice is now superfluous, as every country that is a member of the Buenos Aires Convention is also a member of the Berne Convention, which requires copyright to be valid without any formality of notice.

Related Topics:
All rights reserved - Rights - Copyright infringement - Buenos Aires Convention - 1910

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Moral rights

:Main article: Moral rights

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Many countries recognize certain moral rights of the author of a copyrighted work, following adoption of the WTO Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (which in turn requires, inter alia, the implementation of the relevant provisions in the Berne Convention). Two key moral rights are the right not to have the work altered or destroyed without consent, and the right to be attributed as the author of the work.

Related Topics:
WTO - Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights - Berne Convention

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The Monty Python comedy troupe famously managed to rely on moral rights in 1975 in legal proceedings against American TV network ABC for airing re-edited versions of Monty Python's Flying Circus.

Related Topics:
Monty Python - 1975 - Legal proceedings - ABC - Monty Python's Flying Circus

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The American exclusive rights tradition is inconsistent with the notion of moral rights as it was constituted in the Civil Code tradition stemming from France's revolution. In the United States, exclusive rights are statutory and granted by Congress. The first major copyright case in the United States, Wheaton v. Peters, established that copyright was not a natural right or a common law right. Although the case was later nullified when the Supreme Court declared it null and void, it soon became a symbol for the morality of copyright. When the United States signed the Berne Convention, they stipulated that the Convention's "moral rights" provisions were addressed sufficiently by other statutes, such as laws covering libel and slander.

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In most of Europe it is not possible for authors to assign their moral rights (unlike the copyright itself, which is regarded as an item of property which can be sold, licensed, lent, mortgaged or given like any other property). They can agree not to enforce them (and such terms are very common in contracts in Europe). There may also be a requirement for the author to 'assert' these moral rights before they can be enforced. In many books, for example, this is done on a page near the beginning, in amongst the British Library/Library of Congress data.

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Some European countries also provide for artist resale rights, which mean that artists are entitled to a portion of the appreciation of the value of their work each time it is sold. These rights are granted on the background of a different tradition, which granted droits d'auteur rather than copyright, also granting all creators various moral rights beyond the economic rights recognized in most copyright jurisdictions (see also parallel import).

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Typefaces

In the United States, typeface designs are not covered by copyright, but may be covered by patents if sufficiently novel.

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In Europe, Germany (in 1981) and the UK (in 1989) have passed laws making typeface designs copyrightable. The UK law, unlike the German, is retroactive, so designs produced before 1989 are also copyrighted, if the copyrights wouldn't have already expired.

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Unusual copyright grants

On rare occasions, rights can be granted outside of usual legislation. When the current UK copyright legislation was debated in Parliament, former Prime Minister Lord Callaghan of Cardiff successfully proposed an amendment entitling the Great Ormond Street Hospital for Sick Children to indefinitely retain the rights to payments of royalties for performances of Peter Pan. This privilege can be seen explicitly written into Schedule 6 of the Act.

Related Topics:
Current UK copyright legislation - Parliament - Prime Minister - Lord Callaghan of Cardiff - Great Ormond Street Hospital for Sick Children - Royalties - Peter Pan

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The King James Version of the Bible also has an unusual status: While it is in the public domain throughout most of the world, production in the UK must be authorized by the Crown. Lily's Latin Grammar was also under perpetual crown copyright as of 1911.http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/C/CO/COPYRIGHT.htm

Related Topics:
King James Version - Unusual status - Lily - 1911

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