A copyright holder need not transfer all rights completely, though many publishers will insist. Some of the rights may be transferred, or else the copyright holder may grant another party a non-exclusive license to copy or distribute the work in a particular region or for a specified period of time. Violating copyright laws can lead to severe legal repercussions, including statutory damages, fines, and even criminal liability in cases of willful infringement. Copyright holders have the right to file lawsuits to enforce their rights, which can result in costly settlements and reputational damage for the infringer.

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For example, before 1978 U.S. law required that works be published with a notice of copyright to receive protection. Failure to comply with this requirement would result in the work being in the public domain. If the work is created as part of a person’s employment, it may be a “work for hire,” meaning that the employer is the copyright holder.

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But it’s also raising big questions about copyright, ownership, and fairness. While many platforms use scraped content of unknown origin, Visla only pulls footage, music, and assets from highly curated, fully licensed libraries. We partner with trusted, copyright-friendly brands like Storyblocks and Getty Images, giving users access to millions of royalty-free clips and tracks that are cleared for commercial use.

• A work is automatically protected as soon as it exists, without any special registration, deposit, payment of fee or any other formal requirement.
• Copyright licenses known as open or free licenses seek to grant several rights to licensees, either for a fee or not.
• Further refinements to these definitions have resulted in categories such as copyleft and permissive.

Licensing and Permissions: The Safe Way to Use Copyrighted Works

Copyright owners have the right to grant licenses that specify how their work can be used, whether for commercial, educational, or creative purposes. Some creators choose to make their work available under open licenses, such as Creative Commons, which allow users to share and adapt content under specified conditions. Understanding the terms of such licenses is essential to ensuring compliance with copyright law. A copyright and patent lawyer can assist in drafting and reviewing licensing agreements to prevent legal conflicts. A copyright is a federally granted property right that protects rights holders from certain unauthorized uses of their original works of authorship. The subject matter eligible for protection is set forth in the Copyright Act of 1976.

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This underscores the idea that information itself is not copyrightable, only the specific arrangements or presentations of it. Yes, copyright laws vary by country, but international copyright treaties provide some protection across borders. In China, a court recently recognized copyright in a picture created using AI, finding a human author exercised sufficient creativity in prompting the AI tool a copyright protects an and then revising the output. And South Korea has registered an AI-created film as a compilation, based on the human creativity that went into the selection, coordination, and arrangement of its AI-generated components.

Buildings that exhibit unique and original design elements are copyright-protected. This protection applies to the creative and aesthetic aspects of a building’s design, such as an artistically designed facade or layout. Randy Travis’s recent sound recording, “Where That Came From,” featuring an AI clone of his voice, is a good example of AI assistive use. Due to health challenges, Travis has limited speech function, but to realize the dream of a new record, a production team took the vocal track of a human singer and used AI as a tool to modify the sounds to match Travis’s iconic voice.

Take a recipe or product assembly guide—the steps themselves aren’t protected, but the written or visual presentation may qualify for copyright protection. Only the expression of ideas is protected by copyright—not the ideas themselves. You cannot obtain copyright for a general concept, only for how it is expressed. This category covers artistic creations like paintings, drawings, sculptures, and illustrations. This copyright protection extends to creative designs that are expressed visually, such as jewelry design, furniture design, and toy design.

The length of time during which an author has copyright protection in their work depends on when the work was created. Work that was created and fixed on or after January 1, 1978 is protected for a term of the author’s life plus 70 years. When there are two or more authors of a joint work, the term continues for 70 years after the death of the last surviving author. Works for hire are protected for the lesser of 95 years from the first publication or 120 years from creation.

Copyrightable works include literary, dramatic, musical, and artistic works such as books, plays, music, lyrics, paintings, sculptures, video games, movies, sound recordings, and software. Copyright protection is not indefinite – exclusive rights are granted to creators for only a limited period of time. The duration of copyright protection depends on a variety of factors, including who created the work and whether it was published. However, in general, copyright protection will exist during the creator’s lifetime and then for an additional 70 years. The length of the term can depend on several factors, including the type of work (e.g. musical composition, novel), whether the work has been published, and whether the work was created by an individual or a corporation.

Trade secret law protects valuable commercial information that is kept secret, such as data, formulas, recipes, manufacturing processes, and customer lists. Famously, the only written formula for the Coca-Cola soft drink is kept in a secure vault and, according to the company, is known by only two people at one time. There’s no official registration for trade secrets – in fact, registering the secret would make it no longer a secret! But there are ways for other people to legitimately figure out your trade secrets, such as independently coming up with the same invention or through reverse engineering.

Fair use is judged based on a four-factor test, which looks at things like how much content is used, whether the use is transformative, and the effect on the original work’s market. In exchange for the rights granted by a patent, the inventor is required to disclose (make public), their invention. A patent includes a disclosure (what the invention is, how it works and how to make it).

Copyright’s incentive to the production of content would not apply to AI-generated works and there would be fewer such works produced. It is widely recognized that AI output that is substantially similar to existing copyrighted works would be infringing. For that reason, AI companies take pains to screen their output to ensure it does not duplicate existing works.

For example, if someone mutilates a mural that is recognized as a work of great value, the painter has the right to sue the person who mutilated the work. VARA covers only fine arts such as paintings, drawings, prints, still photographs for exhibition, and sculptures. NYU Libraries supports the university’s research, teaching, and service mission by providing guidance for faculty, students, and staff on how copyright relates to the creation, use, and sharing of knowledge. Original work in this guide is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. Please attribute this work to the NYU Libraries Scholarly Communications and Information Policy Department.

Copyright is a legal protection for an original work of authorship that you produce. Copyright as an intellectual property protection covers many different things, and it’s important to know what is and isn’t able to be protected under copyright. With one important exception, you should assume that every work is protected by copyright unless you can establish that it is not. As mentioned above, you can’t rely on the presence or absence of a copyright notice (©) to make this determination, because a notice is not required for works published after March 1, 1989. And even for works published before 1989, the absence of a copyright notice may not affect the validity of the copyright — for example, if the author made diligent attempts to correct the situation.

In 1998, for example, the United States passed the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which expanded owners’ control over digital forms of their creations and penalized persons who sought to evade technological shields (such as encryption) for copyrighted material. One effect of such legislation was that consumers’ opportunities to engage in activities that previously would have been considered “fair uses” were curtailed significantly. The ruling enhanced the protections available to the originators of open-source software, which allows readers to view its programming or source code, improve it, then redistribute the resulting software in its modified form. Copyright law covers a broad range of original works, including literary pieces, music, films, photographs, software, and even architectural designs. For a work to be eligible for copyright protection, it must be original and fixed in a tangible medium of expression. This means that an idea alone is not protected; it must be expressed in a concrete form, such as a written manuscript or a recorded song.

• This means that it is possible to distribute or display a work without publishing it if there are significant restrictions placed on what can be done with the work and when it can be shown to others.
• You cannot obtain copyright for a general concept, only for how it is expressed.
• However, it’s important to note that copyright protection for these designs only applies to their artistic or decorative elements, not their functional aspects.
• The purpose of such grants was not to protect authors’ or publishers’ rights but to raise government revenue and to give the government control over the contents of publication.
• Widely publicized political and legal battles over the appropriate shape of this system of rules continued well into the 21st century.

In the United States, a patchwork of laws governs individuals’ likeness and voice rights, but there are gaps and inconsistencies in who is protected and against what types of conduct. We concluded there was an urgent need for a new federal right protecting all people—not just celebrities—from the unauthorized use of their likeness and voice. Copyright protection does not extend to ideas, procedures, processes, systems, methods of operation, concepts, principles, or discoveries. This principle, sometimes called the “idea-expression dichotomy,” ensures that protection will extend only to the original elements that the author has contributed to a work, not to the work’s underlying ideas, which remain freely available to the public. This language gives Congress broad authority to advance knowledge (“Science” in 18th century parlance) by providing authors with certain exclusive rights over their works for limited times.

One of the most misunderstood aspects of copyright law is the doctrine of fair use. Fair use allows limited use of copyrighted material without permission, particularly for purposes such as criticism, commentary, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Courts consider several factors when determining whether a particular use qualifies as fair use, including the purpose of the use, the nature of the copyrighted work, the amount used, and the effect on the market value of the original work. While fair use provides flexibility, it is not a blanket excuse for using copyrighted content freely—misapplication of the doctrine can still lead to legal consequences. A copyright lawyer consultation can help determine whether a specific use falls under fair use or constitutes infringement.