Indian Copyright Act - A Brief Description. Review on Tips on Indian Copyright Act

Here is yet another review from my side. This time I chose really a nice subject as a review...Advice on Indian Copyright Act...

This Review is intended to serve as an information about Indian Copyright Act, for all my friends here at Mouthshut.

Collected tons of information on this subject but here is the brief summary of all the information collected...

I have a zeal for collecting some useful information on Indian Copyright Act... Though I do not belong to any of the fields related to this subject but being a respected citizen of democratic country I need to know about this subject also or at least some basic knowledge is needed. So wrting this review to let you people also read and get some useful information out of this review...

So here I start the review...

Copyright protects the rights of authors, i.e., creators of intellectual property in the form of literary, musical, dramatic and artistic works and cinematograph films and sound recordings. Ordinarily the author is the first owner of copyright in a work... In the case of a government work, government shall, in the absence of any agreement to the contrary, be the first owner of the copyright therein... In the case of a work made or first published by or under the direction or control of any public undertaking, such public undertaking shall, in the absence of any agreement to the contrary, be the first owner of the copyright therein.

The rights vary according to the class of work. In the case of a literary work (except computer programme), copyright means the exclusive right:

• To reproduce the work

  
  




• To issue copies of the work to the public

  
  




• To perform the work in public

  
  




• To communicate the work to the public.

  
  




• To make cinematograph film or sound recording in respect of the work

  
  




• To make any translation of the work

  
  




• To make any adaptation of the work

  
  

All the rights of the original work apply to a translation also.

Introduction:

There is a lack of awareness on various issues relating to copyright & related rights amongst stakeholders, enforcement agencies, professional users like the scientific & academic communities and members of the public. The questions put forth by the representatives of these sections of society vary from those relating to the very fundamentals of intellectual property rights to those which relate to practical applications. The Ministry of Human Resource Development has for some time been

contemplating a publication to answer such queries. In this review, an attempt has been made to provide clarifications on most of the issues relating to copyright law and its enforcement in a question – answer format. The language used in the

review is a little bit technical in terms of Lawa & Order but tried to make it jargon free and user friendly as much as possible.

What is Indian copyright Act?

Copyright is a right given by the law to creators of literary, dramatic, musical & artistic works and producers of cinematograph films and sound recordings. Or in other words, it is a bundle of rights including, inter alia, rights of reproduction, communication to the public, adaptation & translation of the work. There could be slight variations in the composition of the rights depending on the work.

Why should copyright be protected?

Copyright ensures certain minimum safeguards of the rights of authors over their creations, thereby protecting and rewarding creativity. Creativity being the keystone of progress, no civilized society can afford to ignore the basic requirement of

encouraging the same. Economic and social development of a society is dependent on creativity. The protection provided by copyright to the efforts of writers, artists, designers, dramatists, musicians, architects and producers of sound recordings,

cinematograph films and computer software, creates an atmosphere conducive to creativity, which induces them to create more and motivates others to create.

To strike an appropriate and viable balance between the rights of the copyright owners and the interests of the society as a whole, there are exceptions in the law. Many types of exploitation of work which are for social purposes such as education,

religious ceremonies, and so on are exempted from the operation of the rights granted in the Act. Copyright in a work is considered as infringed only if a substantial part is made use of unauthorizedly. What is ‘substantial’ varies from case to case. More often than not, it is a matter of quality rather than quantity. For example, if a lyricist copy a very catching phrase from another lyricist’s song, there is likely to be infringement even if that phrase is very short.

The Copyright Act, 1957 protects original literary, dramatic, musical and artistic works and cinematograph films and sound recordings from unauthorized uses. Unlike the case with patents, copyright protects the expressions and not the ideas. There is no copyright in an idea.

Here it is to clear that Copyright does not ordinarily protect titles by themselves or names, short word combinations, slogans, short phrases, methods, plots or factual information. Copyright does not protect ideas or concepts. To get the protection of copyright a work must be original in terms of its overall creation...

So this is all about Indian Copyright Act what I had collected for this review... It is a nice topic to write a lot but it is enough for this time...

Thanks for reading, Waiting for your valuable comments!!!

Regards

Akash Dwivedi