INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY LAW

Intellectual Property Law

Intellectual Property Law

“The introduction of new technology is always disruptive to old markets, and particularly to those copyright owners whose works are sold through well-established distribution mechanisms.”[1]

Technological advancements such as the introduction of the printing press and other technological inventions such as radios and television broadcasting, the internet, compact discs (CD) and digital versatile disc (DVD), 'has affected both the form and substance of intellectual property rights'.[2] The main Intellectual Property Right (IPR) that WIPO is referring to is Copyright. The main aim of my work is to demonstrate using historical examples how the law of copyright has evolved in order to cope with the introduction of new technologies and particularly to deal with the ground-breaking file-sharing of the digital era of the internet.

Moreover, a critical evaluation will follow as to how effectively the law of copyright has responded to the issues raised by these developments, emphasizing on the copyright issues raised by the infamous file-sharing cases of Napster[3] and Grokster.[4]

A suitable starting point would be to introduce you to the basic concepts of copyright law by using the United Kingdom (UK) legislation as a basis (all members of the European Union (EU) as-well the United States (US) have similar legislation as will be seen further below). 'Copyright is a property right that subsists in certain specified types of works as provided for by the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 (CDPA 1988).'[5] The main protected works as provided by the CDPA 1988 include original literary work (“any work, other than a dramatic or musical work, which is written, spoken or sung”),[6] original dramatic work and original musical work,[7] original artistic work[8] including graphic work and photograph, film,[9] sound recording[10] and broadcast.[11]

The copyright owner has the exclusive right of selling the copies of the work, broadcasting it, making copies of it, to rent or lend the work to the public, to perform show or play the work in public, to communicate the work to the public or to make an adaptation of the work.[12] Copyright law can restrict such acts. The copyright owner can also authorise others to do such acts.[13] Where a person performs such an act without the consent or license of the copyright owner, the owner can sue for infringement of his copyright and claim for remedies such as damages or an injuction.[14]

Moreover, multiple copyrights can exist in relation to one piece of work, for example an mp3 file contains a literary work (the words), a musical work (the music) and a sound recording. Therefore, for example in a dispute over file-sharing on the internet there can be many claimants such as the creators of the material and a big media company (that made the sound recording).[15]

The physical medium is not an important issue in relation to a copyright. Therefore, a copyright can subsist on paper or on disk or on the internet. 'A work does not have to be a particular type of physical thing but can be a digital artefact...