Copyright
Copyright protects the work of artists, broadcasters, composers, dramatists, film makers, publishers, recording studios other creative persons from unlicensed plagiarism and other exploitation. It connotes two sets of rights known respectively as "economic rights" and "moral rights". The former consist of the exclusive right to copy, publish, play, broadcast, rent, lend, perform, show, play, communicate to the public or adapt a work. The latter include the rights to be acknowledged as a work's author and to object to the derogatory treatment of a work. The first copyright legislation in England was the Statute of Anne of 1709 which was enacted in response to challenges posed by the printing press. The law has evolved to take account of new technologies such as photography and engraving in the 19th century, films, broadcasting, sound recording, computing and reprography in the 20th and the internet and digitization in the 21st.
Works in which Copyright can subsist
The works in which copyright can subsist include
original
literary,
dramatic,
musical or
artistic
works, sound recordings,
films,
broadcasts and
typographical arrangements
of published editions. The scope of some of these
categories is very large. "literary works" for instance includes
computer programs, databases and other compilations and possibly even net
lists for printed circuit board design as well as poems and novels.
"Films" includes video recordings and animations as well as cinema. For
many years, product designs were protected by
artistic
copyright. The
duration of the protection and breadth of the remedies prompted Parliament
to except manufacturing articles from design documents from the rights
reserved to copyright owners and to create a new intellectual property right
known as unregistered design right in its place.
International
Obligations
Countries that belong to the World Trade Organization ("WTO") are
obliged to give effect to the
Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of
Intellectual Property Rights ("TRIPs").
Members must give effect to various
international agreements, including the
Berne Convention, and provide
specific protection for various types of work such as computer programs and
films, under their national laws. Berne prescribes the works to be
protected, the conditions for protection, the rights to be granted, the
terms of protection, exceptions and remedies. Art 20 of that convention
permits special agreements between parties within the framework of that
convention. One such agreement is the
WIPO Copyright Treaty,
which confers protection on computer programs and
databases, establishes new distribution, rental and communications rights
together with certain exceptions to those rights and requires members to
protect technological and rights management measures against circumvention.
EC Harmonization
The EC Council of Ministers has adopted a
number of directives to harmonize national copyright laws. They cover the
protection of computer software and databases, rental and lending right,
satellite and cable broadcasting, the term of protection, databases, digital
works and resale right. The text of some of those directives can be found in
the panel to the right. Nearly all of these directives have been implemented
in the UK.
Implementation in the
UK
The principal statute is the
Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988
as amended. This Act which came into force on 1 August 1989, repealed and
replaced the Copyright Act 1956. It made a number of far reaching changes
including
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substituting unregistered design right for artistic copyright as the main means of protecting product designs |
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a new set of rights based on copyright to protected actors, dancers, musicians, singers and other performing artistes from unauthorized recording of their performances |
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a whole new set of moral rights, and |
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abolition of conversion damages. |
The 1988 Act has been amended many times since 1989, largely to give effect to the above-mentioned international agreements and EC directives.
Relationship with
other Intellectual Property Rights
The Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 is itself the source of the
three new intellectual property rights mentioned above, namely moral rights,
rights in performances and unregistered design rights in Part III.
Harmonizing directives have created in turn a new database right and a new
publication right.
