Copyright

The Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works-1886, established that all literary works are considered to be copyright-protected regardless of being asserted or declared as they are automatically in force at creation. Although signed by the U.K. in 1887, this was not fully implemented until the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988. The U.S. signed the convention in 1989 and changed its Copyright law accordingly.

To clarify: whenever you write an original work it is automatically protected by Copyright regardless of whether you have declared this in the work. However, we advise you mark work with a Copyright notice (© symbol, your name and year,) to indicate the term of protection: currently, in the U.K. and U.S. this is 70 years after the death of the author or surviving co-author.

To do anything with an author's work other than read it, you need the author's written permission to do so. Otherwise, you commit an illegal act. In general, you must not copy or reproduce; alter; transmit; distribute free or for sale; any work without written permission from the Copyright holder.

The scope of Copyright laws may be different where you live so please check the website of the relevant governing body for your country for clarification. A visit to the UNESCO website may help.

Obooko is based in the United Kingdom and as such is governed by UK law. Here is a summary, for guidance only, issued by The Intellectual Property Office:

Automatic right: There is no official registration system for copyright in the United Kingdom (UK) and most other parts of the world. There are no forms to fill in and no fees to pay to get copyright protection.

So long as you have created and fixed, for example in writing, an original work that qualifies for copyright protection, that is it falls into one of the categories of material protected by copyright, you will have copyright protection without having to do anything to establish this. It is a requirement of various international conventions on copyright that copyright should be automatic with no need to register.

To help protect your copyright work, it is advisable to mark it with the © symbol, the name of the copyright owner and the year in which the work was created. Although this is not essential, it will let others know when the term of protection started and it should then be possible to calculate whether it has ended or not. It will also indicate who the owner was at that time in case it is then necessary to approach them should you need to ask permission to use the work.

Additionally, a creator could send himself or herself a copy by special delivery post (which gives a clear date stamp on the envelope), leaving the envelope unopened on its return (ensuring you also know what is inside each envelope in case you do this more than once). Alternatively you could lodge your work with a bank or solicitor. It is important to note, that this does not prove that a work is original or created by you. But it may be useful to be able to show the court that the work was in your possession at a particular date.

Copyright can protect:
Literary works, including novels, instruction manuals, computer programs, song lyrics, newspaper articles and some types of database
Dramatic works, including dance or mime
Musical works
Artistic works, including paintings, engravings, photographs, sculptures, collages, architecture, technical drawings, diagrams, maps and logos
Layouts or typographical arrangements used to publish a work, for a book for instance
Recordings of a work, including sound and film
Broadcasts of a work

You should only copy or use a work protected by copyright with the copyright owner's permission.

Copyright applies to any medium. This means that you must not reproduce copyright protected work in another medium without permission. This includes, publishing photographs on the internet, making a sound recording of a book, a painting of a photograph and so on. Copyright does not protect ideas for a work. It is only when the work itself is fixed, for example in writing, that copyright automatically protects it. This means that you do not have to apply for copyright. A copyright protected work can have more than one copyright, or another intellectual property (IP) right, connected to it. For example, an album of music can have separate copyrights for individual songs, sound recordings, artwork, and so on. Whilst copyright can protect the artwork of your logo, you could also register the logo as a trade mark.