United World

Copyright is a legal term used to describe the rights that creators have over their literary and artistic works. Works covered by copyright range from books, music, paintings, sculpture, and films, to computer programs, databases, advertisements, maps, and technical drawings.

The exhaustive lists of works which are covered by the Copyright Act 1957 (Amended in 2012) are:

• Literary works such as novels, poems, plays, reference works, newspaper articles;

• computer programs, databases;

• cinematography films and musical composition;

• artistic works such as paintings, drawings and photographs;

• sound recordings;

• advertisements and logos

India is a member and signatory of various international conventions and treaties such as the Berne Convention, 1886 and the Universal Copyright Convention, 1951.

As per the laws in India, one assumes the copyright of a work automatically upon the creation of the work, thus registration is not mandatory, but it is always advisable to register one’s copyright as the certificate of registration offers a strong proof of ownership of the literally or artistic work. Copyright provides the owner of a literally or artistic work with a collection of rights which include economic rights, distribution rights and such other rights which may vary depending upon the type of work.

The period of validity of a copyright protection (published work), as per the law in India, is for the life of the author and continues up to 60 years from the beginning of the calendar year next following the year in which the author dies. The same applies to other literally and artistic works with a slight variation on the starting date of the 60 years, depending upon the work.

Our firm caters to the need of a vast array of clients providing them assistance in registration, licensing, policing, litigation, negotiation, investigation, market survey, etc.We have a dedicated department catering to the area of Copyright Law. The practice area is an ever growing one in India, one which throws up new connotations and interpretations on a daily basis. We make sure that cases and disputes of our clients are treated by us with passionate dynamism and not only as routine matters.