 | This article needs additional citations for verification .(October 2007) |
Copyright law of Ireland is applicable to most typical copyright situations (films, sound recordings books etc.). In most cases, copyright protection expires 70 years after the death of the author/creator. Irish law includes a provision for "fair dealing," similar to that used by other countries.
Irish copyright law is subject to EU directive 2001/29/EC – Harmonisation of certain aspects of copyright and related rights in the information society , most of the provisions of which were transposed into Irish law under the Copyright and Related Rights Act 2000. Irish copyright law was brought into further compliance with the EU directive by the amendment act European Communities (Copyright and Related Rights) Regulations 2004.
The 2000 Act repeals much earlier Irish copyright law, but not all. Related acts are referenced in section 10 of the 2000 Act, and these may also be accessed online in the Irish Statute Book. [1]
Until 93/98/EEC the term of copyright protection on a work was the life of the author and 50 years after death.
From the foundation of the State to 1927, when the first Irish copyright law was passed, there were holes in Irish copyright law.[ clarification needed ]
Broadly, Irish copyright applies to books for seventy years from the end of the year of death of the author, editor or creator. The term for films is also seventy years, but the expiry conditions are more complex.
Unless it is specifically stated in the contract commissioning the work, ownership will vest in the first owner of copyright which will be the person or organisation that was asked to create the work. [2] Notwithstanding the ownership of the copyright, where the employer is a newspaper or periodical, the author may use the work freely for any purpose other than publication in another newspaper or periodical.
Where a work is genuinely anonymous or pseudonymous, copyright expires seventy years from the end of the year of creation.
Sound recordings, and broadcast and cable programmes, are protected for fifty years from first transmission. Musicians' copyright was extended from 50 to 70 years by the Irish Government in 2013. [3]
The arrangement of a publication is protected for fifty years.
Any work created by any officer or employee of the Irish Government or State is protected by Government copyright, which is regulated somewhat differently from general Irish copyright law, and which lasts fifty years from the end of the year in which the work is created. The position of State companies is not clear, so, for example, Ordnance Survey mapping up to the reconstitution of OSi as a state company is copyright for fifty years, while mapping published after that time may, or may not, be subject to a longer term.
Since 2005 Government organisations, local authorities and state-sponsored bodies are obliged by law to have a permissive reuse policy for copyrighted material under the Directive on the re-use of public sector information. [4] [5] The Government has a dedicated website on the re-use of public sector information at psi.gov.ie.
Any Bill or Act of the Oireachtas is protected by Oireachtas copyright for fifty years from the end of the year in which it was made available lawfully to the public. Any work made by or under the direction of a House or Houses of the Oireachtas enjoys similar protection, the copyright vesting in the relevant House, or Houses jointly.
Despite most DVDs' and video cassettes' copyright warnings in Ireland claiming that performance in schools is prohibited, Irish copyright law has a provision that showing "for the purposes of instruction" (i.e. for educational purposes) does not constitute infringement of the copyright of the work.
A work whose copyright term is not calculated from the author's death and which is not lawfully made available to the public within 70 years of creation, loses copyright protection.
The publisher of any publication in Ireland must deliver within one month of publication copies of the work to the National Library of Ireland, the British Library, and the libraries of Trinity College Dublin, Dublin City University, the University of Limerick, and of the four constituent universities of the National University of Ireland; these nine bodies do not need to request such copies. Where such a publication is a serial work, a copy of every issue must be provided. In addition, four other libraries, those of the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, and the National Libraries of Scotland and Wales, may require copies to be provided to them. All of the named bodies may also require an electronic copy of the work, which must be provided if it exists. [7]
A copyright is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the exclusive legal right to copy, distribute, adapt, display, and perform a creative work, usually for a limited time. The creative work may be in a literary, artistic, educational, or musical form. Copyright is intended to protect the original expression of an idea in the form of a creative work, but not the idea itself. A copyright is subject to limitations based on public interest considerations, such as the fair use doctrine in the United States and fair dealings doctrine in the United Kingdom.
The history of copyright starts with early privileges and monopolies granted to printers of books. The British Statute of Anne 1710, full title "An Act for the Encouragement of Learning, by vesting the Copies of Printed Books in the Authors or purchasers of such Copies, during the Times therein mentioned", was the first copyright statute. Initially copyright law only applied to the copying of books. Over time other uses such as translations and derivative works were made subject to copyright and copyright now covers a wide range of works, including maps, performances, paintings, photographs, sound recordings, motion pictures and computer programs.
A work of the United States government is defined by the United States copyright law, as "a work prepared by an officer or employee of the United States Government as part of that person's official duties". Under section 105 of the Copyright Act of 1976, such works are not entitled to domestic copyright protection under U.S. law and are therefore in the public domain.
A database right is a sui generis property right, comparable to but distinct from copyright, that exists to recognise the investment that is made in compiling a database, even when this does not involve the "creative" aspect that is reflected by copyright. Such rights are often referred to in the plural: database rights.
Legal deposit is a legal requirement that a person or group submit copies of their publications to a repository, usually a library. The number of copies required varies from country to country. Typically, the national library is the primary repository of these copies. In some countries there is also a legal deposit requirement placed on the government, and it is required to send copies of documents to publicly accessible libraries.
Anti-circumvention refers to laws which prohibit the circumvention of technological barriers for using a digital good in certain ways which the rightsholders do not wish to allow. The requirement for anti-circumvention laws was globalized in 1996 with the creation of the World Intellectual Property Organization's Copyright Treaty.
Copyright in the Netherlands is governed by the Dutch Copyright Law, copyright is the exclusive right of the author of a work of literature or artistic work to publish and copy such work.
The Directive 96/9/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 11 March 1996 on the legal protection of databases is a directive of the European Union in the field of copyright law, made under the internal market provisions of the Treaty of Rome. It harmonises the treatment of databases under copyright law and the sui generis right for the creators of databases which do not qualify for copyright.
The Legal Deposit Libraries Act 2003 is an act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom which regulates the legal deposit of publications in the United Kingdom. The bill for this act was a private member's bill. This act was passed to update the legislation on legal deposit to reflect the digital age.
The Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, also known as the CDPA, is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom that received royal assent on 15 November 1988. It reformulates almost completely the statutory basis of copyright law in the United Kingdom, which had, until then, been governed by the Copyright Act 1956 (c. 74). It also creates an unregistered design right, and contains a number of modifications to the law of the United Kingdom on Registered Designs and patents.
The Jordanian Copyright Law and its Amendment No. (22) for the year 1992 is based on the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works and does not contain a definition of copyright; however in Article (3) it clearly states that the law offers legal protection to any kind of original work in literature, art and science regardless of the value or purpose of the work.
In copyright law, related rights are the rights of a creative work not connected with the work's actual author. It is used in opposition to the term "authors' rights". Neighbouring rights is a more literal translation of the original French droits voisins. Both authors' rights and related rights are copyrights in the sense of English or U.S. law.
The European Union Computer Programs Directive controls the legal protection of computer programs under the copyright law of the European Union. It was issued under the internal market provisions of the Treaty of Rome. The most recent version is Directive 2009/24/EC.
The Copyright and Related Rights Regulations 2003 transpose the Information Society Directive "(Directive 2001/29/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 22 May 2001 on the harmonisation of certain aspects of copyright and related rights in the information society)",, into United Kingdom law. As such, its main effects are to modify the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 c. 48 with minor consequential modifications to other Acts and secondary legislation.
Crown copyright is a type of copyright protection. It subsists in works of the governments of some Commonwealth realms and provides special copyright rules for the Crown, i.e. government departments and (generally) state entities. Each Commonwealth realm has its own Crown copyright regulations. There are therefore no common regulations that apply to all or a number of those countries. There are some considerations being made in Canada, UK, Australia and New Zealand regarding the "reuse of Crown-copyrighted material, through new licences".
The copyright law of Australia defines the legally enforceable rights of creators of creative and artistic works under Australian law. The scope of copyright in Australia is defined in the Copyright Act 1968, which applies the national law throughout Australia. Designs may be covered by the Copyright Act as well as by the Design Act. Since 2007, performers have moral rights in recordings of their work.
Under the law of the United Kingdom, a copyright is an intangible property right subsisting in certain qualifying subject matter. Copyright law is governed by the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, as amended from time to time. As a result of increasing legal integration and harmonisation throughout the European Union a complete picture of the law can only be acquired through recourse to EU jurisprudence, although this is likely to change by the expiration of the Brexit transition period on 31 December 2020, the UK has left the EU on 31 January 2020. On 12 September 2018, the European Parliament approved new copyright rules to help secure the rights of writers and musicians.
The copyright law of the United States grants monopoly protection for "original works of authorship". With the stated purpose to promote art and culture, copyright law assigns a set of exclusive rights to authors: to make and sell copies of their works, to create derivative works, and to perform or display their works publicly. These exclusive rights are subject to a time and generally expire 70 years after the author's death or 95 years after publication. In the United States, works published before January 1, 1929, are in the public domain.
Works are in the public domain if they are not covered by the intellectual property right known as copyright, or if the intellectual property rights to the works have expired. Works automatically enter the public domain when their copyright has expired. The United States Copyright Office is a federal agency tasked with maintaining copyright records.
The Copyright Act is the legal framework that protects the use of an individual's work once the idea has been physically expressed. It is a form of intellectual property that protects original works of authorship of literary, dramatic, musical and artistic works such as poetry, novels, movies, songs, computer software and architecture. Copyright does not protect facts, ideas, systems or methods of operation, although it may protect the way these things are expressed. Ghana's current copyright law is Act 690 issued by the Parliament of the Republic of Ghana. It was enacted on 17 May 2005 and replaced Parliament's Act No. 110, the country's previous Copyright law from 1985. The Copyright law affords protection to a variety of works, grants Copyright holders rights to their work and defines the duration of that Copyright protection.
Copyright law by country | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Africa |  | ||||
| Americas | |||||
| Asia | |||||
| Europe |
| ||||
| Oceania | |||||