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mark infringement. Passing off one’s owngoods or services so that they appear to besomeone else’s (e.g. labelling footwear“Nike” if it was not produced by Nike) is alsoan unlawful activity and can be enforcedeither at common law, as a tort, or pursuantto the specific rights and remediescontained in the Trade-marks Act.COPYRIGHTCopyright in Canada is governedexclusively by the federal Copyright Act.Copyright gives its owner, among otherthings, the sole right to produce, reproduce,copy or rent the protected work. It does notprevent other persons from viewing thecopyrighted material. For example,copyright does not prevent you from readinga book you have purchased, or giving yourcopy of the book to another person.However, it would prevent you fromphotocopying the book and selling thecopies to other parties.Copyright protects many different kinds of“works”. Copyright can subsist in anyoriginal literary, artistic, musical or dramaticwork, or any substantial part thereof, in anymaterial form whatsoever. It also protectssoftware programs, broadcast signals, liveperformances, sound recordings andtechnological protections measures. Theword “original” is key to defining a work thatqualifies for copyright protection. Originalitycan be tricky to determine and many courtcases revolve around the question ofwhether a work has been copied, even inpart, from someone else’s work. In order tobe protected by copyright, the work also hasto have some degree of fixation orpermanency.Copyright arises automatically upon thecreation of the work and no registration isrequired, although, like trade-marks, theregistration of copyright is useful andbeneficial. A certificate of registration isprimary, albeit rebuttable, evidence that thework is protected by copyright and that theregistered party is the lawful owner. In theevent of a legal dispute, the registeredcopyright holder does not have to proveownership - it is presumed; the onus is onthe opponent to disprove ownership.Copyright protects the expression of an ideabut not the underlying idea itself. As long asthere is no actual copying involved, anyonecan produce a similar work even if they areusing the same underlying idea. Forexample, you may have a brilliant idea for amystery plot but until the script is actuallywritten, or the motion picture produced,there is no copyright protection. Copyright isrestricted to the expression in a fixedmanner (for example: text, recording, ordrawing) of an idea; it does not extend tothe idea itself. Facts, ideas, scientificformulae, titles and news are all consideredpart of the public domain; in other words,they are everyone’s property to use withoutlimitation or restriction.Independent of the usual reproductionrights, authors also have moral rights inrespect of their works. Moral rights includethe right to be associated with a work eitherby name or by pseudonym; the right toremain anonymous; and most importantlythe right to the integrity of the work,meaning that no one can, to the prejudice ofthe author’s reputation or honour, distort,mutilate, modify or use the work forpromotional purposes. Moral rights cannotbe assigned because they are personal toIntellectual Property 79