The copyright law of Canada governs the legally enforceable rights to creative and artistic works under the laws of Canada. Canada passed its first colonial copyright statute in 1832 but was subject to imperial copyright law established by Britain until 1921. Current copyright law was established by the Copyright Act of Canada which was first passed in 1921 and substantially amended in 1988, 1997, and 2012. All powers to legislate copyright law are in the jurisdiction of the Parliament of Canada by virtue of section 91(23) of the Constitution Act, 1867.
Théberge v Galerie d'Art du Petit Champlain Inc[2002] 2 S.C.R. 336, 2002 SCC 34 is one of the Supreme Court of Canada's leading cases on copyright law. This case interprets the meaning of "reproduction" within the Copyright Act of Canada, and touches on the moral rights to copyrighted material and how much control an author has over his work once it is in the hands of a third party.
CCH Canadian Ltd v Law Society of Upper Canada, [2004] 1 SCR 339, 2004 SCC 13 is a landmark Supreme Court of Canada case that established the threshold of originality and the bounds of fair dealing in Canadian copyright law. A group of publishers sued the Law Society of Upper Canada for copyright infringement for providing photocopy services to researchers. The Court unanimously held that the Law Society's practice fell within the bounds of fair dealing.
The Authors Guild is America's oldest and largest professional organization for writers and provides advocacy on issues of free expression and copyright protection. Since its founding in 1912 as the Authors League of America, it has counted among its board members notable authors of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, including numerous winners of the Nobel and Pulitzer Prizes and National Book Awards. It has over 9,000 members, who receive free legal advice and guidance on contracts with publishers as well as insurance services and assistance with subsidiary licensing and royalties.
Sweat of the brow is an intellectual property law doctrine, chiefly related to copyright law. According to this doctrine, an author gains rights through simple diligence during the creation of a work, such as a database, or a directory. Substantial creativity or "originality" is not required.
Greenberg v. National Geographic was a copyright lawsuit regarding image use and republication rights of National Geographic Society to their magazine in electronic form.
Fixation in Canadian copyright law is a threshold consideration that must be used in copyright infringement cases by courts to determine if copyright actually exists. In Canada, a work "must be expressed to some extent at least in some material form, capable of identification and having a more or less permanent endurance" to be subject to copyright protection. Fixation is not a statutory requirement in Canada and the rationale for its use in court has been the subject of much scrutiny.
Authorship and ownership in copyright law in Canada is an important and complex topic which lies at the nexus between Canada's Copyright Act, an important body of case law, and a number of compelling policy motives. Analysis of Authorship and ownership of copyrightable works in Canada can proceed by examination of the rules determining the initial allocation of copyrights, rules governing subsequent changes in ownership, and finally rules governing complex works such as compilations.
Moral rights in Canadian copyright law are protected under the Copyright Act of Canada and include an author's right to attribution, integrity and association of a work. Moral rights are to be distinguished from economic rights; moral rights essentially being derived from the reflection of the author’s personality in his or her work, whereas economic rights grant an author the ability to benefit economically from their work. An author of a work retains moral rights for the length of the copyright, even if the copyright has been assigned or licensed to another party. Moral rights cannot be assigned or licensed, but can be waived by contract.
Reed Elsevier, Inc. v. Muchnick, 559 U.S. 154 (2010), was a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States involving copyright law. The Court held that failure to register a copyright under Section 411 (a) of the United States Copyright Act does not limit a Federal Court's jurisdiction over claims of infringement regarding unregistered works.
Euro-Excellence Inc v Kraft Canada Inc, 2007 SCC 37, [2007] 3 S.C.R. 20, is a Supreme Court of Canada judgment on Canadian copyright law, specifically on the issue of indirect infringement and its application to parallel importation. Kraft Canada sued Euro-Excellence Inc. for copyright infringement due to their importation of Côte d’Or and Toblerone chocolate bars from Europe into Canada. A majority of the court found that the copyright claim could not succeed, although they split on whether the claim failed due to the rights of an exclusive licensee or due to the scope of copyright law.
Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada (SOCAN) v Bell Canada, 2012 SCC 36, is a leading Canadian case on the application of fair dealing under s. 29 of the Copyright Act. It pertained to the use of previews of musical works on online music services that sell digital files of musical works.
Alberta (Education) v Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency , 2012 SCC 37, is a Supreme Court of Canada case that considered whether the photocopying of textbook excerpts by teachers, on their own initiative, to distribute to students as part of course materials is fair dealing pursuant to the provisions of the Copyright Act. The Supreme Court, in a 5/4 split, concluded that the Copyright Board made several errors in its analysis of the "fairness factors". Thus, it allowed the appeal and remitted the matter back to the Copyright Board for reconsideration.
Delrina Corporation v. Triolet Systems Inc2002 CanLII 11389, 58 OR (3d) 339, also known as Delrina II, is a 2002 Ontario Court of Appeal case which established the existence of the merger doctrine in Canadian copyright law. The plaintiff, Delrina Corp., sued Triolet Systems Inc. and Brian Duncombe for infringing its copyright of the computer program Sysview by designing similar software, called Assess. The plaintiffs were awarded an interlocutory injunction but ultimately lost at trial. Delrina Corp.’s appeal to the Ontario Court of Appeal was dismissed.
Entertainment Software Assn v Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada, 2012 SCC 34, is a landmark Supreme Court of Canada judgement that clarified the nature of and relationship between, the bundle of rights created for copyright owners under section 3(1) of the Copyright Act of Canada. In particular, the Supreme Court considered the relationship between the reproduction and communication rights under the Copyright Act, and applied the principle of technological neutrality to hold that downloading a work engaged only the reproduction right, and not the communication right.
The basic legal instrument governing copyright law in Georgia is the Law on Copyright and Neighboring Rights of June 22, 1999 replacing Art. 488–528 of the Georgian Civil Code of 1964. While the old law had followed the Soviet Fundamentals of 1961, the new law is largely influenced by the copyright law of the European Union.
A collective work in the Copyright law of the United States is a work that contains the works of several authors assembled and published into a collective whole. The owner of the work has the property rights in the collective work, but the authors of the individual works may retain rights in their contributions. Electronic reproduction of the whole work is allowed, but electronic reproduction of the individual works on their own, outside the context of the work as a whole, may constitute an infringement of copyright.
