Copyright is an intellectual property right which seeks to protect the form of expression of ideas and essentially, stops a person copying another person’s work and is governed by the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
You do not need to register such a right (as you would with a Trade Mark for example), it comes automatically. However, an owner of such a right should always try to mark copyright material when it is published with the international copyright symbol © followed by the name of the copyright owner and year of publication.
The owner of a copyright could be a writer, website developer, artists (both singers and design artists) and many others who procure work.
You automatically obtain copyright protection if you produce the following and it is the author’s own intellectual creation :-
- Sound, film, television and music recordings,
- original literary, dramatic, musical and artistic work, including illustration and photography,
- original non-literary written work, such as software, web content and databases,
- broadcasts/ podcasts, or
- typographical arrangements of published editions of written, dramatic and musical works.
Copyright allows the owner to prevent the reproduction of a ‘substantial’ part of the copyright work and gives authors a right to royalties and to restrict how their works are reproduced by other people.
Reproduction can include reproduction in any form.
Some examples of which could be printing, online and physical distribution of copies of protected works, renting/ lending works and showing protected works in TV programmes, films, music or publications.
Copyright lasts for a set period, usually the life of the author plus 70 years from the end of the calendar year of the author’s death.
How to stop people using your work
If someone wishes to use your work (or a protected work) they must first obtain permission.
If someone wishes to use works where they do not know who the rights holder is, they must apply for a licence.
Where a holder believes that there has been an infringement, there are civil and criminal remedies available to them. In a copyright infringement action, the same civil relief by way of damages, injunctions, accounts or otherwise, is available in respect of the infringement as for any other property right.
For more information regarding copyright law, please get in touch with our Dispute Resolution department at info@bhwsolicitors.com or alternatively on 0116 289 7000.