Advantages of Copyright
Legal Protection
Creators of original works always enjoy legal protection when their work is reproduced without authorization. Copyright Registration, however, makes it much easier to protect this original work against infringement
Market Presence
By registering a copyright, a public record of your work is created and a proof of ownership is established for your creative work. It can also be used in marketing and for building goodwill in the mind of the customer.
Rights of the owner
The owner of a copyright has the rights over reproduction, dissemination, adaptation and translation of the work. There could be slight variations in the composition of the rights depending on the work.
Copyright is a kind of intellectual property protection like trademark and patents. Copyright registration is done following the Copyright Act, 1957. With copyright registration, you become a legal owner of your creative work in respect of books, paintings, music, website, etc. Copyright registration with the authority secures the creative work of the author cannot be copied. No person is allowed to use the same without the permission of the author or creator. The author is entitled to charge others for using his work or changing it. Copyrights registration safeguards the rights of the inventor from infringement.
In India, the registration gives its owner exclusive, individual rights to distribute, replicate, reproduce the work or give authorization to another entity for the same. It offers a bunch of rights – communication to the public, rights of reproduction, adaptation, and translation of the work. However, ideas, procedures, methods of operation or mathematical concepts cannot be copyrighted.
Copyright is a form of intellectual property protection granted under The Indian Copyright Act 1957, to the creators of original works of authorship such as literary, dramatic, musical, artistic, and certain other intellectual works.
Copyright, is a bundle of rights, which grants protection to the unique expression of ideas. Ideas per se cannot be protected; it is the expression of ideas in a material medium that is the subject matter of copyright protection. Copyright is a negative right and the owner of a copyright gets the right to prevent others from copying his work without his consent towards a commercial end. However, at the same time it gives to the author an exclusive right for the commercial exploitation of his work.
An author, an artist, a composer or a designer looks forward to the commercial benefits accruing from his work, apart from the intellectual satisfaction derived from creating the work. Many a times, unscrupulous traders copy best sellers, or produce pirated versions of a hit-movie or chart topping sound track and sell it at a price that is just a fraction of the original work. This in turn, eats into the commercial benefits that the author of an original work rightly expects and deserves.
The Copyright Act, 1957 as amended from time to time governs the copyright law in India. The new technological inventions necessitated protection of new rights arising because of these invention and this required amendment of the Copyright Act. The Indian Copyright law was amended to bring it in conformity with the provisions of International Conventions, namely, the Berne Convention, 1948 and the Universal Copyright Convention, 1952. The Act was accordingly amended in 1983, 1984, 1992, 1994 and finally in 1999 to bring it in conformity with all International Agreements entered into by the member countries of copyright conventions.
Copyright law comes in here and secures the interests of the author, punishes the infringer and thus provides incentive to the creation of original works. A copyright can be transferred or can be assigned or licensed for a consideration. Copyright, unlike the other Intellectual Property rights does not require any formal procedures as such and affords protection during the lifetime of the author and sixty-years thereafter.