Importance Of Copyright For Your MSME

We hear the word, copyright, a lot with the new wave of technology.  But what is a copyright? A copyright is a form of protection provided by the government to anyone who creates original work. To understand copyrighting, it is important to understand intellectual property first. This guide will take you through the intellectual property as well as copyrights and why they are important to your business.

What Are Intellectual Property Rights?

A right that a person has to have exclusive rights to use its own plans, ideas, or other intangible assets without the worry of competition, at least for a specific period of time. These rights may be enforced by a court via a lawsuit. The reasoning for intellectual property is to encourage innovation without the fear that a competitor will steal the idea and take the credit for it. By protecting your intellectual property, it is easier to accelerate legal proceedings in the event you find someone attempting to steal or imitate your IP; known as an infringement.

What Types Of Intellectual Property Rights Exist?

The type of protection you can get depends on what exactly you’ve created. However, you may not be aware that you get some types of intellectual property rights automatically, while others you have to apply for.

The four types of intellectual property include:

• Trade Secrets

All inventions generally start out as a trade secret of the inventor. Inventors have a desire to keep their ideas secret. Trade secrets concern secret or exclusive information of commercial value. These are not covered by specific legal provisions as other types of IP are, although there could be aspects of contract law or employment law that might be relevant in a particular case.

• Trademarks

A trademark is a sign by which a business identifies its products or services and differentiates them from those supplied by competitors. It can be distinctive words, marks or other features. Its purpose is to establish in the mind of the customer a link between all the different products and services that the company offers and then separate them from those supplied by competitors.

• Copyrights

Copyright is a legal term describing rights given to creators for their original literary, musical or artistic works which allow them to control their succeeding use. Copyrights protect original works of writing, such as literary works, music, dramatic works, charades and choreographic works, sculptural, pictorial, and graphic works, sound recordings, artistic works, architectural works, and computer software. With copyright protection, the holder has the exclusive rights to modify, distribute, perform, create, display, and copy the work.

• Patents

A patent is a title which provides its owner with the right to prevent others from exploiting the invention mentioned in the patent. It does not allow by itself making or selling an invention but it rather gives the right to exclude others from making, using, selling or importing the patented invention.

What Is Copyright?

Copyright is a legal right, existing in many countries, that grants the creator of an original work exclusive rights to determine whether, and under what conditions, this original work may be used by others. The dictionary defines copyright as “a person’s exclusive right to reproduce, publish, or sell his or her original work of authorship. the exclusive rights are not absolute but limited by limitations and exceptions to copyright law, including fair use. A copyright notice should contain:

• the word “copyright”
• a “c” in a circle (©)
• the date of publication, and
• the name of either the author or the owner of all the copyright rights in the published work.

What Rights Are Received Because Of Copyright?

Long lists of works covered by copyright are usually not to be found in legislation. Nonetheless, broadly speaking, works commonly protected by copyright throughout the world include:

• literary works such as novels, poems, plays, reference works, newspaper articles;
• computer programs, databases;
• films, musical compositions, and choreography;
• artistic works such as paintings, drawings, photographs, and sculpture;
• architecture; and
• advertisements, maps, and technical drawings.

Copyright protection extends only to expressions, and not to ideas, procedures, methods of operation or mathematical concepts as such. Copyright may or may not be available for a number of objects such as titles, slogans, or logos, depending on whether they contain sufficient authorship.

How Work Can Be Copyrighted?

The copyright registration process can be a bit challenging but it is important for the well-being of your work. It is important to understand if your work is eligible for copyright or not.  It is the expression of an idea, and not just a thought or idea. It is not a word. This is because a word is never given copyright. The work is an original work and not the copy of someone else’s work. Section 9 of the Copyright Act requires for the establishment of an office to be called the Copyright Office for the purpose of the Act. The Copyright Office is to be under the immediate control of a Registrar of Copyrights to be appointed by the Central Government, who would act under the superintendence and directions of the Central Government. So you can register your copyright with the Copyright Office. On average, the entire process of copyright registration takes 8-9 months. This is further subject to discrepancies in the application if the copyright office raises any.

Along with the necessary fee, an application needs to be submitted either in DD/IPO. Once this application is filed, a diary number is generated and issued to the applicant.  There is a minimum wait of 30 days for recording and analysing any objections that may come up against the copyright application. the registration solely depends on the registrar. Once everything is cleared from the registrar’s end, the applicant received the copyright and can legally exercise all rights that come with the owner of that copyright.

How Are The Rights Ensured?

Copyright protection rules are fairly similar worldwide, due to several international copyright treaties. Copyright infringement disputes are usually resolved through direct negotiation, a notice and takedown process, or case in civil court. Extreme or large-scale commercial infringement, especially when it involves counterfeiting, is sometimes are finished via the criminal justice system. Shifting public expectations, advances in digital technology, and the increasing reach of the Internet have led to such widespread, anonymous infringement that copyright-dependent industries now focus less on pursuing individuals who seek and share copyright-protected content online, and more on expanding copyright law to recognize and punish, as indirect infringers, the service providers and software distributors who are said to promote and encourage individual acts of infringement by others.

There are many more aspects of copyrighting that you could research about before applying for. If you have any queries about copyrights and how they work, contact deAsra. We will guide you through the process from start to finish.