'But that's mine!'...Copyright Law and how it works.

Copyright Law is put in place to protect peoples intellectual property. 'Intellectual property' refers to the product of a persons creativity, skill, time or labour. Copyright does not have to be registered in order to protect literary, dramatic, musical, film, photography or broadcasting work of an individual. The condition of the protection of a person's work by copyright law is that some effort must have gone into the creation of their original work. A person has copyright over something they have produced for 70 years after their death and a piece of film is copyrighted for 50 years after its production.

Copyright only exists in the way that information or creativity is expressed, therefore there is no copyright over ideas or facts.

Much legal action has been taken over the game of Trivial Pursuit. in 1984, Fred Worth filed a lawsuit against game creator's Chris Haney and Scott Abbott for allegedly taking many of the facts for their game from his trivia books. Worth lost the case as there can be no copyright on facts, even though he was able to show that they had used particular facts that were untrue, a device used by Worth so that he was able to tell if someone else was using the facts that he had collected.

The creators were again involved in a dispute over the game in 1994, when David Wall stated that he had picked up Haney whilst he was hitchhiking and had told him of his ideas for a board game like Trivial Pursuit. Mr Wall lost the case because there is no copyright over ideas.

But what about the news?
In the case of the news, there is no copyright over the information reported on. However, there is copyright on the article that the information is expressed in. Remember, there is no copyright over facts, only over expression. This also includes interviews that may be carried out during the article.

So, what about spoken words?
Under the Copyright Act, 1988, there is copyright in an individuals spoken words. Under section 58 of the Copyright Act, the speakers words can be recorded for reporting purposes as long as:

• the recording is direct and has not been taken from another recording
• the speaker has not forbidden the right to record
• the purpose of the recording has not been forbidden by the speaker/copyright owner

A speakers words can be recorded without their knowledge, however, once the words are recorded they are copyright of the speaker. If the speaker has been reading from a script, not only does the speaker have copyright of the speaking but the writer of the script also has copyright over the words spoken.

Do I have copyright over everything I produce?
You do, as long as you're careful about it. If you work for a newspaper, it may say somewhere in your contract that they have copyright over your work, so always read things carefully.

In a bizarre event, John Fogerty of Creedence Clearwater Revival was taken to court over a copyright issue where he was thought to have plagiarised himself. When Fogerty left CCR he had to sign away the royalties of his songs. Later when he released another song, he was accused of plagiarising another of his own songs, to which he no longer held the royalties. Fogerty insisted that the song was in the style that he had always worked in, and after playing the song to the jury it was decided that the two songs did not sound alike enough to be considered plagiarism and the case was dropped.


What if I don't approve of what my work is being used for?
The authors of copyrighted work have moral rights. This means that the work produced cannot be used in a way which the author is not comfortable with, such as being falsely attributed to them or used in a derogatory way.