Legal Aspects of the Information Society. - Free Technology Academy

GNUFDL • 5 Intellectual property: authors' rights and copyright
1. Intellectual property: authors' rights and copyright
Intellectual Property Rights, or IPR, are a series of rights that protect intangible
(intellectual) works of human creation. While the term IPR in Anglo-Saxon
countries confusingly covers several types of rights, including Authors' rights
(copyright), patents and trademarks, in the continental tradition, IPR is limited
to Authors'rights,orcopyright, with the concept of "Industrial Property
Rights" to cover other types of rights.
In this Module 2 we look at IPR in the continental tradition, Authors' rights,
and its special relationship with software, while Industrial Property Rights are
covered in Module 3.
1.1. The traditional concept of Authors' rights
Authors' rights is a legal term describing the certain specific rights granted to
creators in their original works. In the legal system of most English-speaking
countries, the term copyright is used, as we shall see later. In this section we
shall see how the law establishes and regulates these rights.
Neighbouring rights
In the general theory of Authors' rights, there are also certain rights
attached to a work that are granted to certain persons who are not authors,
such as interpreters and performers on the one hand, and producers,
broadcasting entities on the other. Thus a recorded musical work
(e.g. a song) will be concurrently protected by several different rights:
• The authors' rights of the composer of the music and the lyricist.
• The performers' rights of the singer and the musicians.
• The producers' rights of the person or corporation which made the
recording.
1.2. Origin of Authors' rights/copyright
Protection by Authors' rights stems from the historical moment when works
were initially exploited economically by reproduction in hard copies. First, by
medieval copiers and, especially, further ahead, with the appearance of the
printing press. Publishing houses, as a whole, benefited directly from the invention
of the press, as works were transformed into commercial objects that
could reap them economic benefits. However, at the same time, the use of the