Copyrights Laws

By Law & Legal & Attorney Last updated Tuesday, March/26/2019

The "Bundle of Rights"

The holder of a copyright is granted the exclusive right to sell copies, reproduce, distribute, perform and adapt the copyrighted work, although the copyright holder is entitled to sell or license these rights to others. The purpose of this legal monopoly is not so much to enrich the creator as to give people an incentive to produce creative works to the ultimate benefit of the larger society.

Any type of artistic work can be protected under copyright law as long as it is original and has been reduced to a tangible form (you cannot copyright a whistled tune, for example, until you at least record it or reduce it to musical notation). There is no requirement that it ever be published. Music, literature (both fiction and nonfiction), sculptures, paintings and even photographs and computer programs are protected under copyright law. Technological creations, by contrast, can only be protected under patent law. Copyright protection only extends to expressions of ideas, not to ideas themselves.

Copyright law keeps changing, and the length of time that a copyright endures depends on when the work was originally created. In the case of a work created in 2009 by an individual author, copyright protection extends 70 years past the death of the author. In the case of a work deemed to have been created by a corporation under the work for hire doctrine (see below), protection extends for 120 years after its creation. Shorter copyright duration rules apply to photographs.

Under U.S. copyright law, it is not necessary to place a copyright notice on published copies of a work in order to preserve the copyright. It is also not necessary to register the copyright with the U.S. copyright office. Nevertheless, notice and registration are both good ideas in order to preserve evidence of copyright in the event of litigation.

The fair use doctrine allows anyone to use a small part of a copyrighted work as long as the author is credited. The first sale doctrine allows secondhand copies of a particular copy of a work to be sold without having to pay royalties. The work for hire doctrine allows anyone to create a work on behalf of an employer or other contracted party, in which case the hiring party is treated as the original author.

Downloading music from the Internet without permission from the copyright holder is generally considered illegal under U.S. copyright law. Canada and some other nations permit this practice under the first sale exception described above.

The vast majority of countries in the world are members of the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic works. If you create a work in any Berne Convention country, it is automatically protected by every Berne Convention country (subject to local copyright laws).

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