Copyright FAQs

• Copyright is a property right protecting the economic interests of people or organisations that create works of various types and own the rights in their work. This right cannot be taken from them nor can their works be used without their permission. (s.17, s.37). As a property right it can be transferred, e.g. by inheritance or contract.
• Copyright is a moral right, which includes the right to be identified as the creator of a work, not to have works falsely attributed to you or have your work falsely attributed to someone else. It also covers the right not to have your work changed or adapted in any way without your permission (s.107-119).

• Any expression of ideas or facts, once they are fixed in some way, has copyright protection. There are many ways of “fixing” including writing down, filming, making a sound recording, printing, painting, performing, broadcasting and entering on a database. The ideas or facts themselves cannot be protected by copyright.
• Copyright is established automatically and is international.
• Copyright applies to all categories of information irrespective of format, and includes traditional areas such as literary, dramatic, musical and artistic works, as well as “new” categories such as computer programmes, databases and websites.

• In most cases a work is protected by copyright for 70 years after the death of the creator (s.24).
• Sound recordings, broadcasts and the typographical arrangements of published works are protected by copyright for 50 years (s.29, 191, 193).
• In many media there can be several rights valid simultaneously e.g. an author and publisher can have different rights to the same published edition at the same time.
• While the content of a work may be out of copyright if the author has been dead more than 70 years, a publisher will continue to have copyright in the typographical arrangement of any published edition of that work for 50 years.
• Where material is published in volumes or parts or broadcast in episodes, the period of copyright protection starts from the date on which each part was made available.
• Rights equivalent to authors’ rights may be acquired for 25 years by anyone who first makes a work available to the public (e.g. by publication) after its original copyright has expired, as long as it has never before been made publicly available.
• Database copyright applies to anyone who makes a substantial investment in obtaining, verifying or presenting the content of a database and applies for 15 years from the end of the year in which the database was completed (s.320-361).

• The copyright holder is usually the author, editor, publisher, producer, director, photographer, database compiler, sculptor etc.
• Where a work is created in the course of employment, the employer is normally the copyright holder. Employment and research contracts should be explicit in this area.

Copyright generally belongs to the author. This however will change if the author (researcher) has assigned copyright to a third party in a written agreement, e.g. the editor or publisher. Some other examples when ownership may have transferred to a different party include the following:

• The employing institution might have employed the author to undertake the work (in this case the copyright belongs automatically to the institution unless a contract freely entered into by both parties specifies otherwise).
• If the author was sponsored by a third party, then a condition of that sponsorship may have been that the copyright was assigned to the sponsor. 

• The right to use and gain economically from the use of a work is restricted to the owner of the copyright. Any other use should be with the permission of the copyright holder and, if required, include payment to them.
• Subject to exemptions in the Act, the copyright owner has the exclusive right to undertake, or allow others to undertake, certain actions such as reproduction, making works available (e.g. open access, broadcasting, lending), adaptation (e.g. translation from one language to another, conversion of format of electronic documents).

• The right to use and gain economically from the use of a work is restricted to the owner of the copyright. Any other use should be with the permission of the copyright holder and, if required, include payment to them.
• Subject to exemptions in the Act, the copyright owner has the exclusive right to undertake, or allow others to undertake, certain actions such as reproduction, making works available (e.g. open access, broadcasting, lending), adaptation (e.g. translation from one language to another, conversion of format of electronic documents).

• The right to use and gain economically from the use of a work is restricted to the owner of the copyright. Any other use should be with the permission of the copyright holder and, if required, include payment to them.
• Subject to exemptions in the Act, the copyright owner has the exclusive right to undertake, or allow others to undertake, certain actions such as reproduction, making works available (e.g. open access, broadcasting, lending), adaptation (e.g. translation from one language to another, conversion of format of electronic documents).

• The Act states that “Copyright is infringed by a person, who without licence of the copyright owner undertakes or authorises another person to undertake acts restricted by copyright”.
• Copyright can be infringed in many ways, either directly or indirectly and relating to whole or part of works.