Copyright In Intellectual Property Law

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INTRODUCTION

Copyright is one of the most important part of Intellectual Property Laws. World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) defines copyright as
“Copyright (or author’s right) is a legal term used to describe the rights that creators have over their literary and artistic works. Works covered by copyright range from books, music, paintings, sculpture, and films, to computer programs, databases, advertisements, maps, and technical drawings.”
Copyrights give the protection to the author with respect to various things. These things will vary from country to country and are the subject to the statute of the place or law of the land. The conditions relating to the rights, their term, validity etc . depends on the statute and jurisprudence …show more content…

Skill
c. Judgment
This doctorine has been applied from time to time in UK case laws. One of the earliest case law in this regard is Walter v. Lane . The brief facts of the case are that The Earl of Roseberry who was a prominent politician gave speeches. Reporters from the Times Newspapers took the shorthand notes of the speeches, transcribed them into their own words and published in the newspaper. The respondent in this case i.e. Lane took the pieces of these articles and published them in a book. The main question of Law in front of House of Lords was whether the reporters could be considered authors in this case or not.
The house of Lords with the decision of 4-1 said that the reporters were authors in the ambit of Copyright Act 1842 as their works involved skill of writing while writing the reports, judgment and labor of writing is involved. Thus the reporters were considered to be authors in this …show more content…

In this case the court had to consider whether what could be included in the category of original work under the Copyright Act, 1911. The case dealt with examination papers which were written for the University of London back in 1915. Under the University of London's senate's decision all examination papers created by appointed examiners would belong to the University, aside from drawings, and the University reserved all rights to reproduce those exams without any extra compensation to the examiners who had written them. Subsequently examiners were appointed for the exam period held in September of that year, among which were Mr. Jackson and Professor Lodge who were in charge of creating the exam papers for mathematics. After the exam papers had been created, the University entered into a contract with University of London Press, assigning it the copyrights and rights of publication to any specific exams for a fixed period of 6 years. University of London Press were then issued the rights to publish the exams written in the previous year, which were then published by University of London Press in early 1916. In the same month University Tutorial Press published exam from the previous year as well, containing 16 out of 42 exams from January 1916, which were attained from students rather than the published copies made by the University Press.

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