This chapter discusses the commercial exploitation of copyright, both in a domestic and in a European context. It covers the Crown copyright in the UK; commercial exploitation of copyright in the UK; and exploitation under European law, i.e. friction with the free movement of goods and competition law.
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This chapter provides a brief summary of the discussions on copyright. It covers the roots of copyright; the various types of work that attract copyright protection; and the duration of copyright protection.
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This chapter considers the evolution of modern copyright law against the background of its historical development in the UK and the international and European legal frameworks within which UK copyright law has been increasingly set since the nineteenth century. It examines the rationale and justifications for copyright and identifies the general policy context within which law and policy has developed in the UK and the EU. It also highlights the rapid development of new technologies which has brought copyright reform to the forefront in recent times, the difficulties which this new environment presents for the copyright framework, and how the framework has developed to such challenges.
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This chapter considers the ‘economic rights’ the copyright owner enjoys while copyright protection endures. These are the rights that the Copyright, Designs, and Patents Act 1988 (CDPA 1988) calls ‘acts restricted by copyright’, which may be exploited by transferring them to others or licensing others to use them for a price. The chapter discusses the rights flowing from ownership of copyright and the international framework that underpins them, noting the influence upon UK law of a number of EU Directives. It identifies the general principles pertaining to infringement of economic rights, before turning to the detailed rules on each economic right: to make copies, issue copies to the public; rent or lend commercially to the public; perform, show, or play in public; communication to the public; and make adaptations. It discusses authorisation of infringement (accessory liability) in relation to these economic rights, and finally considers secondary infringement of copyright.
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This introductory chapter provides an overview of copyright protection. It discusses how United Kingdom copyright law has developed from the mid-16th century onward. The purpose of giving this account is to highlight two recurring themes: firstly, the law's struggle to keep up with changing technology; and, secondly, the effect of external influences on domestic law. The chapter then looks at the theoretical justifications for copyright and the extent to which they accord with the current law, and the principal characteristics of copyright, including the crucial difference between protecting an idea and protecting the expression of that idea. There are a number of aspects of copyright that do not apply to other intellectual property rights like patents and trade marks. Understanding these differences will help one in distinguishing between the different types of intellectual property right.
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This chapter discusses the duration of copyright protection in the UK. The basic rule is that the term of copyright has been harmonized at life of the author plus 70 years in the EU. The basic rule applies to the original category of works (literary, dramatic, musical, and artistic works) and to films. Entrepreneurial works, such as sound recordings and broadcasts, receive 50 years of copyright protection. Performances fixated in a phonogram will in future be protected for 70 years. The term of protection for typographical arrangements is 25 years.
Chapter
This chapter considers the evolution of modern copyright law against the background of its historical development in the UK and the international and European legal frameworks within which UK copyright law has been set since the nineteenth century. It examines the rationale and justifications for copyright and identifies the general policy context within which law and policy has developed in the UK and the EU. It also highlights the rapid development of new technologies which has brought copyright reform to the forefront in recent times, the difficulties which this new environment presents for the copyright framework, and how the framework has developed to meet such challenges.
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This chapter discusses exceptions and limitations to the rights of the copyright owner. Copyright law establishes many such exceptions and limitations, listed in the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 (CDPA 1988) as the ‘permitted acts’. These acts can be carried out in relation to the copyright work without the owner’s permission or, in some cases, can be performed subject to terms and conditions specified by the statute rather than by the copyright owner. The chapter discusses the influence of the international framework and EU Directives on exceptions and limitations. It analyses the ‘permitted acts’ and discusses the freedoms afforded through them to users of protected works in the UK, and also briefly considers how far they may be set aside by contractual provision.
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This chapter explains the law on authorship and copyright ownership. The creator of a work is, in principle, its author. There can be more than one creator for a work and therefore also more than one author. Joint authorship arises when more than one creator is involved in the creation of the work and the contribution of each creator can no longer be separated out in the final result. Copyright is a property right and, as such, needs an owner. The general principle is that the author will be the first owner of the copyright in his or her work.
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This chapter focuses on rights in performances, which covers all aspects of the making of a recording of a performance and its subsequent exploitation. The discussion includes subsistence of rights; term of protection; the qualification requirement; content and infringement; the nature of the performer’s rights and their transfer; and moral rights.
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This chapter discusses protection under the law of copyright. Topics covered include copyright basics; obtaining copyright; forms of protected work; the requirement of originality; copyright ownership; copyright infringement; the nature of copying; other rights belonging to the copyright owner; the development of software copyright; and literal and non-literal copying. The law of copyright is perhaps the major branch of intellectual property law relevant to computer software. Virtually every piece of software will be protected by copyright. The main issue concerns the extent of the protection that is offered. Computer programs are generally protected as literary works. This was appropriate in the early days where computers performed essentially functional tasks – often associated with mathematical calculations. It is arguable that modern software, which often makes extensive use of graphical images, is more akin to an artistic work than a literary one. Regardless of categorization, the courts in the United Kingdom have applied a narrow interpretation of the scope of copyright. Reproduction of the underlying code will be unlawful but replication through independent work of the effects produced by the code (often referred to a non-literal copying) will not.
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This chapter discusses the qualification requirement for copyright protection in the UK. The UK copyright system is based on the principle of national treatment contained in the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works 1886, in the Universal Copyright Convention, and in the TRIPS Agreement. This requires that authors connected with another member state are to be treated in the same way as a member state’s own authors and should receive the same copyright protection. That connection with a member state might be provided in two ways: the author may have a personal relationship with the member state, or the work may be first published in that member state.
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This chapter considers two main topics. It first examines the provisions of the EU’s Copyright in the Information Society Directive, which sets out to amend some provisions of copyright law better to fit the realities of an online world. It then looks at some of the issues associated with enforcement of copyright, considering the extent to which intermediaries such as Internet Service Providers (ISPs) might be held liable for infringing acts committed by their users. Attention is increasingly paid to the possibility that rights owners might proceed against users whose actions infringe their rights. In many cases this will require the cooperation of ISPs and a major component of the Digital Economy Act 2010 is concerned with the manner in which this process might be managed.
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All books in this flagship series contain carefully selected substantial extracts from key cases, legislation, and academic debate, providing able students with a stand-alone resource. Copyright refers to a set of exclusive rights in relation to cultural works such as literature, newspapers, photographs, drawings, artworks, films, music, and plays, and also extends to less obviously aesthetic creations, such as computer programs and databases. This chapter discusses the history, justifications, and sources of UK copyright law as well as the requirements for copyright protection. The requirements for protection that are explored are subject matter, originality,and fixation. The impact of EU copyright law on these UK requirements is examined.
Chapter
Justine Pila and Paul L.C. Torremans
This chapter introduces the European law of copyright and related rights with an overview of its basic principles. It then considers the European (EU) statutory framework governing copyright and related rights and the policy agenda of the European Commission on which it is based, including the Commission’s digital single market initiatives. The chapter then concludes with a wider discussion of the EU’s response to the challenges posed by globalization and digital technology. The picture to emerge is one of ever-growing legislative fragmentation off-set by ever-growing substantive harmonisation as a result of thirty years of active EU law- and policy-making, including a large number of policy communications and harmonizing directives, the ratification of several international agreements, and almost daily decisions from the Court of Justice.
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Justine Pila and Paul L.C. Torremans
This chapter considers the three requirements for copyright and related rights to subsist—the existence of a subject matter of protectable type that is sufficiently connected to the territory of the protecting state and that satisfies any applicable formalities—the combination of international and EU legal sources by which they have been harmonized for EU Member States, and the beneficiaries of the resulting copyright and related rights protection.
Chapter
Justine Pila and Paul L.C. Torremans
This chapter considers the nature and scope of the rights conferred by copyright and related rights under European law. The starting point for this discussion are domestic conceptions of copyright and related rights as conferring a range of economic and moral rights on authors and related rights holders to authorize or prohibit certain acts in relation to the protected work or subject matter within the territory of the protecting state, subject to the availability of a limitation or exception. With this as background, the chapter considers the precise nature and scope of the rights conferred by copyright and related rights as a matter of European law, and such aspects of those rights as remain untouched by European law.
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This chapter first discusses the two roots of copyright. On the one hand, copyright began as an exclusive right to make copies—that is, to reproduce the work of an author. This entrepreneurial side of copyright is linked in with the invention of the printing press, which made it much easier to copy a literary work and, for the first time, permitted the entrepreneur to make multiple identical copies. On the other hand, it became vital to protect the author now that his or her work could be copied much more easily and in much higher numbers. The chapter then outlines the key concepts on which copyright is based.
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L. Bently, B. Sherman, D. Gangjee, and P. Johnson
This chapter is concerned with the restrictions placed on the copyright owners’ ability to exploit and use their work. It first considers the various mechanisms that are used to regulate contracts between authors and entrepreneurs and then assesses the impact of competition law on the ability of copyright owners to exploit their works. It also looks at the ways in which copyright contracts are regulated with respect to users of copyright, along with the issue of orphan works. The chapter concludes by outlining the different controls that are imposed on collecting societies.
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This chapter considers the ‘economic rights’ the copyright owner enjoys while copyright protection endures. These are the rights that the Copyright, Designs, and Patents Act 1988 (CDPA 1988) calls ‘acts restricted by copyright’, which may be exploited by transferring them to others or licensing others to use them for a price. The chapter discusses the rights flowing from ownership of copyright and the international framework that underpins them, noting the influence upon UK law of a number of EU directives. It identifies the general principles pertaining to infringement of economic rights, before turning to the detailed rules on each economic right: to make copies; issue copies to the public; rent or lend commercially to the public; perform, show, or play in public; communication to the public; and make adaptations. It discusses authorisation of infringement (accessory liability) in relation to these economic rights, and finally considers secondary infringement of copyright.
