Copyright
What is copyright?
When copyrights have been applied to something it means it
has the exclusive legal right giving to the originator of the subject matter,
it can range from print, film and music material. It’s a law that gives you
ownership over the things you create.
Copyright rights
When you have ownership over something the copyright law you
have both economic and moral rights and the law entitles you with several
rights those rights are:
·
The right to reproduce the work
·
To prepare derivative works
·
To distribute copies
·
To preform the work
·
To display the work publicly
Intellectual Property
Intellectual property is either protected automatically from
theft or copying, or you can register it to protect it. Just by knowing your
rights and having the right type of protection you can help stop people taking
or using either the name or products/brands, inventions, the design and looks
of your products and the things you write or produce.
Four types of IP Protection
·
Patents
·
Trademarks
·
Designs
·
Copyright
John Tenniel vs.
Whittard
John Tenniel was an illustrator in the 19th
century, and he created the illustrations for Lewis Carroll’s timeless classic
Alice in Wonderland. His illustrations are now being used on Whittard’s Alice
in Wonderland range (mugs and teapot collection), The company didn’t buy or
able to ask for any rights to use the artwork and it this is a breech of the
law, as could be classed as copyright infringement but in fact the copyright
law states the ownership of any work only lasts up to 70 years form the end of
the calendar year in with the artist had died; for typographical arrangements
its only 25 years. After the 70 years are over the work can be used by anyone
meaning it was perfectly fine for his illustrations to be used on their
products.
Examples of Whittard’s collection:
DACS – Design and
Artist Copyright Society
DACS is a non-profit visual artists’ rights management
organisation that was established by artists for artists. The organisation was
founded over 30 years ago and is still continues to campaign for artists
rights, adding to their sustained and vital contribution to the creative
economy. The idea is to collect and distribute royalties to visual artists and
how to do this is through three rights management schemes: Payback, Artists
Resale Right and copyright Licensing.
Questions:
How can you protect your work
through copyright if it is an automatic right?
1.
Ensure your work is properly marked. – State
that your work is protected under the Copyright law, and this will restrain
infringement. But having copyright notice is not really required as your own
work is automatically yours.
2.
Register your work. - If the ever comes a point when your work is
infringed, you have evidence to back up that it actually yours. The copyright
registration service provides you with valuable evidence that proves you have
ownership of your work.
3.
Keep or register supporting evidence. – There
are two types of supporting evidence:
·
Evolution of ideas. – This is evidence of
progression/development stages of the work over a period of time.
·
Footprint or watermarking. – This is evidence
that is shown on a finished document that will identify the designer in some
way.
4.
Agreement between co-authors. – If the work is a
joint venture, you should know and understand your rights, what is the
percentage in cost and sales you are entitled too, and understand what happens
if the other person leaves.
How does copyright affect
you?
Copyright gives you the protection and is beneficial to
those who produce creative work so it is a vital factor when it comes into the
design industry. Due to my course it affects me on a regular basis as I can’t
just look and take other artist ideas and designs but I wouldn’t want to do
that anyway as I want to be original. But it also means there is a chance other
people will actually copy others ideas and maybe it could be one of mine and I
wouldn’t like it so I think the copyright law is a very important thing in the
design industry as it is so easy to pass work off as your own now, due to
things like the internet and social media.
How can you ensure you don’t
infringe on someone else’s copyright?
To ensure you don’t infringe on anybody else’s work, it’s
best to not copy anything especially anything on the Internet as it is almost
always copyrighted by default. Just be creative and produce my own original
work then the will be no violation to the copyright law.
