Lecture 1 – Copyright (Part 1)
What we are about to look at:
• Origins of copyright law / brief history
• Copyright as a property right
• The main LDMA rights / derivative rights / Performance rights
• Breach of copyright
• Fair use
• Performance rights in more depth
• Moral rights
• Types of questions in copyright law
Where did copyright law come from?
The first copyrights in the UK were monopolies lasting a couple of years granted by the Crown. This
continued from 1518 to around 1623.
In 16th century the Stationers’ Guild in London created a register for published editions of books. This
created a perpetual common law monopoly right in favour of the publisher. It therefore favoured
publishers and also the Queen (as her censors could ensure that no book published in the City of
London was treasonous). this system went on for some time. But in the light of the activities of Scottish
publishers following the Union of Kingdoms. Scottish publishers were in the habit of republishing
works that had been protected in England and then selling copies into England and it was felt that
something had to be done to prevent this because this was an attack on the stationers Guild’s rights.
The next step was the Statute of Anne of 1710 which created a statutory monopoly in favour of
publishers of 14 years length. When the first 14-year period ended, the Guild tried to state that the
monopoly continued at common law. This involved a battle with Scottish book publishers who
republished previously protected books. This was partially successful until the 18 th century when the
common law rights were stated to be defunct. Now all that remained was the statutory right.
Copyright remained concerned with published books for a long time but gradually started to include
other kinds of protected work. In 1777, printed sheet music was protectable under copyright work.
Though sounds came much later.
The Designing and Printing of Linen Act 1787 allowed protection to be give not printed fabrics for a
two-month season. But this was extended to three months after a short period. I think you can see
that up till now it was protected printed materials.
The Dramatic Copyright Act of 1833 introduced protection for stage performances – now dramatic
works.
The Paris Convention of 1883 and the Berne Convention of 1886, enacted into the UK by the Copyright
Act 1886, extended copyright to pretty much the present protected categories of Literary, Dramatic,
Musical and Artistic works.
,Subsequently the copyright laws have extended to cover new technological uses of these LDMA
primary works.
First, where does current copyright law come from?
UK law is contained in the:
Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 (as amended – extensively), and the Copyright and Related
Rights Regulations 2003 (as a result of the Information Society Directive).
British copyright law until Brexit depended directly on EU directives (EU Copyright directive, EU Rental
directive, EU Satellite and cable directive, EU Computer programmes directive, EU Copyright duration
directive, EU Artists resale rights directive, etc.)
And these in their turn depended upon wider international agreements:
WIPO treaties - World Intellectual Property Organisation. (Berne Convention for the Protection of
Literary and Artistic Works) (from WIPO); Rome Convention for the Protection of Performers,
Producers of Phonograms and Broadcasting Organisations.
Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (from WTO); WIPO Copyright
Treaty (from WIPO); WIPO Performers and Phonograms Treaty (from WIPO))
The big picture: WIPO -> EU -> UK
So while Brexit makes some differences, as far as the big picture is concerned, not a lot will change in
the near future.
What kind of a right is copyright?
• 1988 Act Section 1(1) states:
– Copyright is a property right which subsists in accordance with this Part in the
following descriptions of work—
– (a) original literary, dramatic, musical or artistic works,
– (b) sound recordings, films [F1 or broadcasts], and
– (c) the typographical arrangement (facsimiles) of published editions.
– Copyright is the right to prevent others from copying, or reproducing, certain types
of created work for commercial exploitation.
• IMPORTANT: A distinction is often drawn between ideas and the expression of ideas.
Copyright protects the expression of ideas but not the underlying ideas themselves.
University of London Press Ltd v. University Tutorial Press Ltd [1916] 2 Ch 601
The University of London, over a couple of centuries, had set up daughter colleges in various
parts of the United Kingdom. So, for example, Exeter College was part of the University of
London and became Exeter University eventually, Aberystwyth, Swansea, even University
, College in Dublin. These were all known as university colleges. You could attend your local
university college and you would sit at the University of London exams and you would receive
tuition locally or by correspondence using correspondence materials from the University of
London. In fact, the University of London external programme still exists in some form today,
but over a rather limited number of degree courses. Not surprisingly, as part of the materials
which were delivered by the University of London to its various colleges, past copies of
examination papers were available to assist students in their revision. Now, there were a
number of tutorial colleges set up specifically to provide people in local areas with tuition. The
university tutorial Press Limited was one of these organisations and they decided that it would
be a useful thing if they duplicated the exam papers that had been set in the past by the
University of London for all the various subjects. Now, nobody seemed to think at first that
this was problematic. After all, an exam paper is an exam paper, and as frequently happened
after the exam, a number of papers will be left over that people would not want to take home
with them. so they were readily available and could be effectively duplicated. But the
University of London thought that this was unacceptable because it meant that they lost a
stream of income, which the university tutorial press was picking up. And so, they raised an
action of copyright's in their literary work. The university tutorial press responded, saying that
they had a defence, which was that the ideas which were contained in these exam papers
were commonplace. Students at the appropriate level would know what these ideas were.
And so there was nothing original about the exam papers. The University of London press
disagreed with this and said that while the ideas that underlay the examination papers may
not have been particularly original, the form in which the ideas were expressed in the
questions was an original expression of those ideas and therefore was protectable by
copyright. And the judges in the case agreed that that was so. And this is where the distinction
was clearly made between the ideas themselves, which don't have to be original and the
expression of those ideas which do have to be original. So copyright is a property right, which
subsists in the original expression of literary, dramatic, musical or artistic ideas.
• Section 3 – which defines the kinds of protected work says:
(1) In this Part—
– "literary work" means any work, other than a dramatic or musical work, which is
written, spoken or sung, and accordingly includes—
– (a) a table or compilation, (e.g., bus timetable) and
– (b) a computer program; (Why would a computer programme be included here? Well, the
answer is that a computer programme is generally written by a number of steps of where you
move from one instruction to the next instruction and so on. And originally, these were done
with numbered instructions so that the computer can do them in rotation one after the other.
Now, when it's put into a computer, when it's finally compiled into the computer, it's turned
into machine code, which directly manipulates the activities of the central processor. But as
far as the formats of computer programmes is concerned, as they exist, when they are being
written and adjusted and so on, then they have this form of successions of numbered lines of
instruction. So they are regarded as being a literary work.
– "dramatic work" includes a work of dance or mime; and
