copyright1 - Intellectual Property

What is Copyright?

Copyright is the bundle of intellectual property rights that is granted by the Copyright Act to a person who as a result of their intellectual creativity created literary and artistic works. These rights are granted for limited periods of time and are subject to certain permitted exceptions.

These bundles of rights are proprietary rights giving the owner the right to do and or authorise other persons to do the acts restricted by the copyright law.

What does copyright protect?

literary works: novels, short stories, poems, dramatic works and any other writings, irrespective of their content (fiction or non-fiction), length, purpose (amusement, education, information, advertisement, propaganda, etc.), form (handwritten, typed, printed; book, pamphlet, single sheet, newspaper, magazine); whether published or unpublished; in most countries “oral works,” that is, works not reduced to writing, are also protected by the copyright law;

artistic works: whether two-dimensional (drawings, paintings, etchings, lithographs, etc.) or three dimensional (sculptures, architectural works), irrespective of content (representational or abstract) and destination (“pure” art, for advertisement, etc.);

derivative works: translations, adaption’s, arrangements and other transformations or modifications of works; and collections of works and databases, whether in machine, readable or other forms; and collections of expressions of folklore provided that such collections are original by reason of the selection or arrangement of their contents.

Basically Copyright protects any work as long as they are ORIGINAL intellectual creations and they fall under the specified category of works under the Copyright Act.

Examples of work protected under Copyright.

Examples of literary works: novels, poems, plays, newspapers and computer programs; database; films, musical compositions, and choreography, etc.

Examples of artistic works: paintings, drawings, photographs, and sculpture; architecture; and advertisements, maps, and technical drawings, etc.

Examples of derivative works: A movie that was made based on a novel, data collected from a study for all the different species of fish in a geographical area and collated into a database. Translating an English version of a book into another foreign language. Transforming a movie into a video game or vice versa.

What are related or neighbouring rights?

A field of rights related to copyright has rapidly developed over the last 50 years. These related/ neighboring rights grew up around copyrighted works, and provide similar, although often more limited and of shorter duration. Neighbouring rights are categorised into performer’s right, recording rights and broadcasting rights.

Performers Rights are designed to protect performers (such as actors and musicians) in their performances against unauthorised recording or live transmission of their live performances and to guarantee them adequate control over and remuneration for the exploitation of recordings of their performances.
Recording rights are designed to protect producer of sounds recordings (for example, cassettes, recordings and compact discs) in their recordings.
Broadcasting rights are for protection of broadcasting organizations in their radio and television programs.

What is not protected under Copyright?

Copyright does NOT protect ideas or mere fact. This includes procedures, systems, method of operation, concept, principle, discovery or mere data, whether expressed, described, explained or illustrated or embodied in a work. In addition, any other text of a legislative, administrative or legal nature or any official translation thereof is not protected.

Examples include: National Gazette, a new system of voting, a card index system for filing employee’s details of name and address, registration forms for incorporating a company etc.

Idea? – Why cannot ideas be protected under Copyright?

All copyright works have their basis on an idea. But Copyright cannot protect intangibles. When the author or the creator decides to use certain modes of expression such as writing or painting to expose that idea then Copyright only protects the way in which those ideas are expressed. It is that expression that makes a work original.

This also means that there can be many different works about the same idea and all of them will be protected by copyright regardless of its quality as long as they express this idea in an original and tangible manner. For example more than one person may have an idea about writing a book on a boy who rose from rags to riches but all of them will have different characters in the book or the story may take place in different places.

What rights does copyright provide?

The creators of original works protected by copyright, and their heirs, have a set of exclusive rights. They hold the exclusive right to use or authorize others to use the work on agreed terms. These exclusive rights are known as economic rights because they protect the financial position and the commercial interest of copyright owners and they are meant to reward creators for their creativity, investment, labour and to encourage them to keep producing new works. Therefore the original creator has the right to:

reproduce the work in any form of copying such as photocopy, downloading, uploading, printing recording for example in the form of compact discs, cassettes or videotapes, photographing, scanning etc.
public performance, as in performing a play in front of an audience or playing a CD in a store or restaurant etc.
broadcast the work by playing a song over the radio or showing a film on TV
translate the work into other languages, or its adaptation such as novel onto screenplay.
distribute the work by selling copies to the public.
communicate the work to the public by uploading a work over the internet.

The economic rights have a time limit, of 50 years after the creator’s death. Economic rights are passed on to the creators heirs after the creator dies. They continue to receive payment for the reproduction, public performance, broadcasting, translation, distribution and communication to the public of the work for next 50 years.

The creators of original works protected by copyright also have moral rights which are rights that maintain a personal link between the creators and their These are the right to:

be recognized as the author of the work by signing their names or remain anonymous or sign a fictional name.
to oppose changes to it that could harm the creator’s reputation

The moral rights do not have a time limit and remain even after the creator dies.

What are related or neighbouring rights?

A field of rights related to copyright has rapidly developed over the last 50 years. These related/ neighbouring rights grew up around copyrighted works, and provide similar, although often more limited and of shorter duration of 25 years. Neighbouring rights are categorised into performer’s right, recording rights and broadcasting rights.

Performers Rights are designed to protect performers (such as actors and musicians) in their performances against unauthorised recording or live transmission of their live performances and to guarantee them adequate control over and remuneration for the exploitation of recordings of their performances.
Recording rights are designed to protect producer of sounds recordings (for example, cassettes, recordings and compact discs) in their recordings.
Broadcasting organizations in their radio and television programs.

How is copyright protection obtained?

Copyright protection is automatic. The creator’s original work is automatically entitled for protection under the Copyright Act and the creator will have exclusive rights upon creation of the work for the first time. There are no formality requirements to register a copy of the work with IPOPNG.

In addition, you may put a copyright notice on your work to make it legally and morally yours. The copyright notice should basically consist of the world “Copyright” or the symbol ©, the year the work was first published or made known to the public and your name.

Example of a Copyright notice: “Copyright, 2017 Kopi Rait

Why protect copyright?

Copyright and its related/neighbouring rights are essential to human creativity, by giving creators incentives in the form of recognition and fair economic rewards. Under this system of rights, creators are assured that their works can be disseminated without fear of unauthorized copying or piracy. This in turn helps increase access to and enhances the employment of culture, knowledge, and entertainment all over the world.

Can copyright be transferred?

Creators may decide to sell the economic rights to their works. The payment that is received when a creator sells one or more of his rights is called royalties. The two ways of selling economic rights are through an assignment and licensing:

Assignment is a way of transferring of the creator’s economic rights so that the buyer becomes the new owner of the copyright.
Licensing means that the creator remains the owner of his economic rights but allows the buyer of the rights to carry out certain acts under those rights for a limited time and purpose.

How is it regulated?

Copyright and neighbouring rights itself does not depend on official procedures. A created work is considered protected by copyright as soon as it exists. However, many countries have a national copyright office and some laws allow for registration of works for the purposes of, for example, identifying and distinguishing titles of works.

Many owners of creative works do not have the means to pursue the legal and administrative enforcement of copyright, especially given the increasingly worldwide use of literary, musical, and performance rights. As a result, the establishment of collective management organizations or societies is a growing trend in many countries. These societies can provide members the benefits of the organization’s administrative and legal expertise in, for example, collecting, managing, and disbursing royalties gained from international use of a member’s work.

What are Collective Management Organizations?

A collective management organization is generally formed or appointed by copyright holders to manage the rights in their copyright works. Collective management organizations are appointed by copyright owners to administer the licensing of rights, collection of royalties and enforcement of rights on their behalf. If you intend to use a work protected by copyright, such as music or other sound recordings, you will need to be authorized, which is normally granted through a license granted by copyright owners / collective management organizations. You may obtain licenses from either the copyright owners, or from legally authorized collective management organizations administering the relevant rights governing your use of such works.

Collective management organizations are independent, private organizations. The collective management organizations will be able to provide further information relevant to your intended use of works. You may also wish to obtain legal advice to verify that your intended use of works will be appropriately covered by licenses provided by the relevant collective management organizations.

Can copyright be protected worldwide?

The first international agreement to try to make sure copyrights were respected in other countries as well as the country of origin is the Berne Convention of 1886. The Berne Convention contains fundamental principles of mutual protection by means of national treatment.

Each member state of the Berne Convention must offer the same protection it offers to works of its national creators to works by authors from other member states. In addition according to the Berne Convention, works do not need to be registered in order to be protected by copyright. Copyright protection is automatic from the moment the work is created.

Since the adoption of the Berne Convention in 1886 authors have enjoyed a set of common rights in more than 160 countries that have signed the Convention.

However, PNG is not a member of the Bern Convention

How has copyright kept up with advances in technology?

The field of copyright and related/neighboring rights has expanded enormously with the technological progress of the last decades, which has brought new ways of spreading creations by such forms of worldwide communication as satellite broadcast and compact discs. Dissemination of works via the Internet is but the latest development which raises new questions concerning copyright, WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organization) is deeply involved in the ongoing international debate to shape new standards for copyright protection in cyberspace. The organization administers the WIPO Copyright Treaty and the WIPO Performance and Phonogram Treaty (often known together as the “Internet Treaty”), which set down international norms aimed at preventing unauthorized access to and use of creative works on the Internet or other digital networks.

PNG has not signed the Internet treaties.