Copyright

A website, a brochure, a product photograph, a piece of software, a training manual — a business produces copyright works every week, usually without registering anything or thinking of them as property. It also uses works made by others: an image taken from a search engine, music playing in the shop, a paragraph borrowed for a presentation. Both sides are easy to overlook until a letter arrives demanding a fee for an image, or a competitor copies a catalogue and nobody can show who made it or when.

Copyright arises without any formality, which makes it both generous and hard to prove. It protects the expression rather than the idea, lasts long after the work is made, and reaches further into everyday business material than most people expect:

• the rules on originality, and on why an idea, a method, a format or a style is not protected by itself;
• the rules on software and databases, and on the separate protection given to whoever invested in building a database;
• the rules on moral rights — being named as the author, objecting to changes, and how far these rights can be waived;
• the rules on quotation, parody, teaching and the other exceptions that allow a work to be used without permission;
• the rules on photographs, music and texts found online, and on the permissions to hold before publishing them;
• the rules on playing music or showing works in business premises, and on the organisations that collect fees for it;
• the rules on proving authorship and the date of creation when there is no register to rely on;
• the rules on showing that a work was copied rather than created independently, and on the evidence a court expects.

Our lawyers can support you with this.