What is Copyright Law

What is Copyright Law

Copyright law lays out a framework of rules around how that work can be used. It sets out the rights of the owner, as well as the responsibilities of other people who want to use the work. It enables the copyright holder to copy, change, sell, share, rent his work and also prevent other people from doing these things.

Copyright is legal right that protects the use of your work once your idea has been physically expressed. Under the copyright law of United Kingdom, a copyright is an intangible property right subsisting in certain qualifying subject-matter. Copyright law is governed by the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, as amended from time to time. As a result of increasing legal integration and harmonisation throughout the European Union a complete picture of the law can only be acquired through recourse to EU jurisprudence.

For the work to be protected by copyright law it needs to be original and tangible. 

·       Original: For a work to be original it must be the product of your own skill and labour or intellectual creation and should not just replicate the work of someone else (such as imitating a drawing or a painting).

·       Tangible: It can’t just be an idea as Ideas cannot be copyrighted. The idea needs to be expressed in some kind of physical form. For example, When you make up a tune in your head, it is only protected by copyright law from the moment you write down the musical score or record a performance of it.