 Hello, it's Waylon Chow. Welcome to the Intellectual Property, Module 6b, Part B. In this part, we will look at copyright. In particular, what does copyright apply to? How is it obtained? And what are a copyright owner's legal rights? What does copyright apply to? There are seven different forms of expression that are protected by copyright that are set out on this slide. There are literary works, which includes, surprisingly, computer programs or computer software, and the lyrics of songs. So just the lyrics are considered to be literary works. The actual music would be protected as musical works. And there's also dramatic works, artistic works, which would include paintings, drawings, and photographs, and even architectural works. The performance of dramatic works or musical works is a separate form of expression. Sound recordings is another form of expression, and communication signals, which would include broadcasting signals. For a work to be eligible for copyright protection in Canada, three requirements have to be met. The first is originality. It's, at the very least, not a verbatim copy from a previous work. It has to be an exercise of the author's skill and judgment, and it's not a trivial or mechanical exercise that created the work. The second requirement is fixation, meaning the work has to be in a fixed medium. So if it's music, it has to be recorded in a digital format, or it can be written in the form of sheet music. The third requirement is some connection to Canada. So one connection is that the work is created within the geographic boundary of Canada, or the work is created by a Canadian resident or citizen outside of Canada, or a work created by a citizen or resident of a country that is not Canada, but that country has signed a copyright treaty that Canada is a party to, such as the Byrne Copyright Convention, the Rome Convention, or the Universal Copyright Convention, or the World Trade Organization. How do we obtain copyright protection? Copyright arises automatically on the creation of an original work in a fixed medium. So if you are seeking copyright for a song, once you've created the song and put it down on paper as sheet music, then copyright has been created, or if you perform the song and that performance has been recorded, then that performance is automatically copyrighted. Registration is not required to create copyright, but registration is available and is recommended so that a presumption of copyright ownership over a specific piece of work is created. The general rule is that the creator of the work is the first owner of the copyright. A different situation is where an employee has created a piece of work in the course of employment. In that situation, it's the employer who owns the copyright. If a work is created by an independent contractor, the ownership of the work that is created is determined by the terms of the agreement between the business and the contractor. A copyright can be assigned from one person to another, or from one person to another company. In other words, copyright ownership can be bought and sold. One example is back in 1985, Michael Jackson bought the Beatles song catalog for at that time a huge sum of $47.5 million. That song catalog is now estimated to be worth about $2 billion. Paul McCartney is quoted to have said, the annoying thing I have is I have to pay to play some of my own songs. Each time I want to sing, hey Jude, I have to pay. If you want to read the full story about Michael Jackson buying the Beatles songs, there is a very interesting article in Forbes.com. If you are the owner of a copyright, what legal rights does that give you? What you get is a whole bundle of legal rights. Here is a whole long list. I am not going to read through all of them, but just highlight some of the key ones. The first one is a right to produce, reproduce, perform, or publish a work. Reproduce means that you have a right to make copies or to authorize someone else to make copies of that work. When it comes to computer software, which is subject to copyright, you have a right to license the computer software. That would normally be thought of as selling copies of the computer software. Whenever you buy a piece of computer software, whether it is an app or a piece of software like Microsoft Office, what you are buying is a license to use that software based on certain terms set out in a license agreement. Another key right that is highlighted here is the right to reproduce, license, or publish sound recordings. Remember we talked about intellectual property law trying to strike a balance in providing individual benefits to creators and also providing benefits to society as a whole. When we talk about the duration of a copyright, there is a time limit for copyright. In Canada, a copyright lasts for the life of the creator plus another 50 years. In other countries, specifically the US, the UK, and the European Union, it is a longer period of time. It is the life of the creator plus another 70 years. In the case where a corporation is a copyright holder, the copyright lasts for only 50 years. So it is not life plus 50 years but only just 50 years. For performance broadcasts and sound recordings, the copyright is good for 50 years from the time of the performance broadcast or production. Once a copyright expires, the work is said to be in the public domain, which means that anyone in the public can freely use the work, can make copies, can publish it without having to pay any royalties. So those works are able to benefit all of society once the copyright expires. So authors from a long time ago, like Shakespeare and Jane Austen, all of their books are in the public domain. If you own a Kindle, for example, you can get any Shakespeare play on your Kindle or Jane Austen book, like Pride and Prejudice or Emma, on your Kindle for free because there is no copyright holder that is entitled to a royalty for those books anymore. Another set of legal rights associated with copyright is called moral rights. Moral rights belong to the author or creator of a work and those moral rights are as good for the same length of time as the copyright. Moral rights, unlike copyright, cannot be bought or sold or transferred to another person. So even if the copyright in a work has been assigned to someone else, the author or the creator still retains the moral rights. However, an author can agree to waive their moral rights. So what are moral rights specifically? There are three aspects of moral rights. The first is the right of attribution, which is a right to have the author's name attached to the work. So if it's a painting by Picasso, Picasso is the author or the creator of the painting. No one else can say that they are the creator of the painting. The second right is the right of integrity, which is a right to prevent others from distorting, mutilating, or otherwise modifying the work to the prejudice of the author's honor or reputation. So this right was asserted in a case involving the Toronto Eaton Center. If you've ever been to the Eaton Center, you may have noticed that down the middle of the shopping mall hangs these sculpted Canada geese, like a huge sculpted flock of Canada geese hanging down the centre atrium of the mall. And they've been there since the mall was first built in the late 1970s. So in the early 1980s, one Christmas shopping season, the owner of the mall decided to put little red Christmas bows on the neck of each of these Canada geese. So the artist who created these Canada geese, Michael Snow, was incensed when he saw these little bows on his beautiful geese. So he took the Eaton Center to court and was able to force the Eaton Center to take off those little red Christmas bows. So he asserted the right of integrity, his moral right, specifically the right of integrity. The third moral right is the right of association, which is a right to prevent the work from being used in association with a product, service, cause or institution. Royalties are payments to copyright owners in exchange for the use of their copyrighted work. With music, for example, if you perform a copyrighted song, you have a legal obligation to pay the owner of that song or the owner of the copyright of that song a royalty. Music does present some specific challenges in how the royalties are collected and paid. Music tends to be performed by many people in many different places. So there are some logistical difficulties in collecting and paying the royalties. So to make it easier, there are these things called copyright collectives. In Canada, the collective, the music collective is called Socan. This is from the Socan website. So Socan explains that if there was not a collective like Socan, and if you wanted to perform, a publicly perform a piece of music, you would have to somehow get in touch with the songwriter, lyricist or music publisher, whoever owns the copyright, and then negotiate a royalty with them, and then you would perform the music. But with Socan, it's much easier. You go ahead and perform the song, and then you would pay a set royalty to Socan. Socan would take that royalty and pass it on to the copyright owner. The royalties are set by Socan. There's a long list of set royalty rates depending on how music is used. Socan also on their website explains that if you happen to own a recording of music, which could be a CD or it could be a download that you paid for, or even if you owned the sheet music for a song. When you perform that music, if it's a sheet music, if you perform it, you have an obligation to pay a royalty. If you have a CD or a download that you paid for and you play that CD for a commercial purpose, let's say you play it at a restaurant that you own, then you are required to pay a royalty. That recording and that sheet music only allows you to use the music or the recording for a private non-commercial purpose. But once you start using it for a commercial purpose, that will trigger a requirement to pay a royalty to Socan, and then Socan would pass on that royalty to the copyright owner.