Intellectual Property
Section 2
IP can be split into six main categories: patents, copyright, database rights,
know-how, designs and trade marks.
Copyright, which protects the form in which you express an idea, not the
idea itself, is the main IP right that is relevant to academic materials and
publishing. However, other rights, such as moral rights, performers'
rights, database rights, trade marks, patents and domain names, may also
be relevant.
Copyright
Copyright arises automatically; there is no need to register it in the UK. In
the US, it is possible to register copyright and, there, you should indicate
your copyright interest. You must not have copied the work for which you
are claiming copyright protection from another source. Table 2 below gives
some examples of works which can be protected by copyright.
Table 2
Photographs, for example, any that you might take
to use to illustrate a book, can be protected by copyright.
If you write a piece of computer software to facilitate
a VLE that you want to set up, the software itself can
be protected by copyright.
If you write a piece of music for use as a background
score to a film that you have created, that music can
be protected by copyright. If you write lyrics to
accompany the music, the lyrics can attract separate
copyright protection to the music. The film itself is
protected by copyright.
When a book is published, the way that it is laid out, its
typographical arrangement, is protected by copyright.
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