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Copyright is the rights to certain creative works such as text, artistic works, music, computer programs, sound recordings and films. Copyrights provide exclusivity to control the use of creative work. It is granted exclusively to the copyright owner to reproduce, to perform or to display the work to the public . In Australia, copyright law is governed by the Commonwealth Copyright Act 1968 (Copyright Act).
Copyright owners have a right to prevent others from reproducing or communicating their work without their permission to others, though the copyright owners may sell these rights to someone else. Copyright does not protect ideas, concepts, styles, or techniques such an idea for a film or book, but it will protect a script for the film or even a storyboard for the film.
A copyright is an intangible right of property. It can be divided and distributed in any number of ways among the right holders, including by territory or format. There can be more than one party who holds an interest in the copyright work, all such interests are managed through licences. The granting of a copyright licence is distinguished from an assignment of copyright. The assignment of copyright is the complete transfer or sale of rights to a third party.
In a copyright licence, the copyright holder, or their agent grants the party a license for some or all of all of its rights to use copyright material exclusively or non-exclusively, for a particular purpose. Such as, a novelist may exclusively licence the right to print, publish and sell their book to a publishing house. The publishing agreement can facilitate how different rights are licensed. Such as the novelist may also give their publisher certain subsidiary rights, including the right to licence the manuscript to a translator or to another publisher dealing in audiobooks. The novelist may decide to reserve their dramatisation rights, which allows them to negotiate independently with a producer for the licensing of film rights. To make a film, the producer would receive the right to produce and distribute the film adaptation, and often the exclusive right to create and distribute merchandise.
Under some agreements, a licensee may be empowered to enter new contracts with sub-licensees or take legal action for copyright infringement by third parties. The income payable to the author for use of their work under licence would be managed through a publishing agreement.
The owner of a copyright is the original creator of a copyrightable work. Copyright can be sold, shared, licensed to or unless contracted away to someone else. Copyright could be owned by multiple people equally in case of the work is collaborative or as stated in the contract with other parties. If someone requested to reproduce or reuse the copyrightable work, the approval of reproduction of work is requested from each copyright owner of the work. The copyright owner can delegate the responsibility to manage the copyright ownership on her or his behalf.
If you create a copyrightable work under a contract of employment, the employer is likely the owner of the copyright in the work.
Moral rights should always be considered if someone is re-using and altering works (for example, through editing, cropping, or colourising). Moral rights generally last until the copyright in the work expires. The performers or creators can provide written consents to acts that would otherwise infringe their moral rights. Moral rights cannot be transferred or waived. There are defences to moral rights infringement where the infringing act is reasonable in all the circumstances.
An infringement of copyright work occurs whenever another person makes copies or exploits a copyright work commercially without the permission of the owner of the copyright work. Creating a remarkably similar work independently does not constitute infringement. The reproduction of the copyright work must be “substantially similar” for infringement to occur and the subsequent work must be copied from the first work.
You cannot avoid copyright infringement by making changes to a copyright work. If you want to use something from the work created by someone else, you need a permission to use as it is or with a change to the copyright work even in a very small portion on your website, or in a brochure, or even for purely personal purposes.
Only the owner of copyright can use the © symbol in a way given as follows:
© [followed by the owner’s name] [followed by the year in which the copyright work was created], for example
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