This overview briefly explains the landscape of copyright law.

• Intellectual Property Rights

Intellectual Property Rights (IPR), very broadly, are rights granted to creators and owners of works that are results of human intellectual creativity. These works can be in the industrial, scientific, literary and artistic domain. It can be in the form of an invention, a manuscript, a suite of software, or a business name.

In general, the objective of IPR is to protect the right of a copyright author in his work and at the same time allow the general public to access his creativity. IPR maintains this balance by putting in place time-limits on the author’s means of controlling a particular work. The law that regulates the creation, use and control of the protected work is popularly known as Intellectual Property Law (IP).

• Types of Intellectual Property Rights

The principal Intellectual Property Rights are as follows:

1) Copyright                2) Patents            3) Trade Marks            4) Design Rights

Amano likes to give the visitor an insight into the legal framework of copyright law as a means of protecting one’s work.

• What is a Copyright?

Copyright is one of the key branches of IP law and it protects the expression of ideas. For a work to gain copyright, it has to be original and should be expressed in a material form. Copyright is thus effective upon the creation of the work.

• Laws on Copyright

Currently, copyright law in the EU has been subject to various amendments and the latest amendments of October 2003 were aimed at bringing the Act in line with the EU Directive on Copyright and Related Rights in the Information Society (EU Copyright Directive) 2001 and the challenges posed by the Internet.

• Relevance of Copyright

Copyright is of fundamental importance to visitors as they being users, producers and disseminators of information will need to minimise their liability and maximise exploitation. Merely because material (e.g. internet content, software, on-line databases or journals) is openly available on the Internet does not necessarily imply that it may be freely used. The vast majority of such material is made available under certain terms and conditions. One should therefore always ensure that the use of online materials complies with the terms of use stipulated by its rights holder.

• Works protected by Copyright

The types of copyright works are broadly categorised into:

1) original literary, dramatic, artistic or musical works,
2) sound recordings, films or broadcasts and
3) the typographical arrangement of published editions.

Literary work also includes

    (a) a table or compilation other than a database,
    (b) a computer program,
    (c) preparatory design material for a computer program and
    (d) a database.
 
Copyright ownership in collaborative research: In the case of collaborative research partnership between Amano and third parties or an outside partner copyright ownership can be held jointly. It is often the case that an agreement regulates this partnership and so ownership rights are distinguishable.

• Enforcement of Copyright

The copyright owner enjoys considerable ancillary rights and remedies to enforce his copyright in a work. To enforce his right he can move the court for the award of damages, serving of injunctions restricting the infringer from carrying out the infringing activity or interdict, for payment of profits and/or for the granting of an order that the infringing materials be destroyed or delivered.