Copyright protection — Registration not a requirement
Contrary to the widely-held belief among musicians and other creative persons that it was obligatory to register their works at the Copyright Office to benefit from ownership protection, it has been revealed that such registration indeed is not mandatory.
Advertisement
The Chief State Attorney at the Copyright Office in Ghana, Ms.Yaa Attafua, has told Showbiz in an interview that copyright protection for musical works and other artistic endeavours is automatic, irrespective of whether an artist registers the work with the Copyright Office or not.
“The moment you create a work, be it a story which is written down or in any tangible format, films you have produced, a computer software programme, musical works and choreographic works, copyright protection starts automatically,” Ms Attafua said.
Registration of copyright work is enshrined in the Copyright Act 690 (2005) which states that: A publisher of a work in the republic may submit the work for registration by the Copyright Administrator after its publication and two copies of the best edition may be deposited at the Copyright Office. Copyright protection of a work shall not be dependent on registration of the work.
“Even though it is not mandatory to register, we still encourage people to come and register their work because in this age of digital technology, it’s very easy for copyrighted works to be copied.
“So if you deposit your work with us and maybe it falls into the wrong hands and somebody reproduces it and is commercialising it, then the records would assist us to determine who the true owner of the work is, assuming the matter went to court.
“If you register with us, it’s like you have given notice to the whole world that you are the owner of the work,” she said.
Advantage
The main advantage, she said, is that registering gives the right owner’s evidence of ownership and authentication of intellectual property because registering your work presumes that you are the owner of the work.
Other Trending Stories
“The owner of the work has the right to authorise or prohibit the use of his work and any use without his or her consent amounts to an infringement,” she said.
She was also emphatic that registering merely gave the presumption of ownership as it could be later expunged from their records if it was later found out that the person doing the registration was not the true owner of the copyright work.
“We’ve had instances where the courts have asked us to expunge certain registrations from our records because it came out that the people who came to register the works were not the owners of the work. It is presumed that when you register, you are the owner.
“But if you go and steal somebody’s work and the matter goes to court and you are subjected to cross-examination, you will be found out. But that is not to say we don’t go through the works. It’s just that we do not conduct searches as it is done in industrial processes.
“ We have a folklore officer who listens to musical works and if there are any signs or indications that there is some amount of copying, the person is invited and it is pointed out to him or her to expunge that portion before the work is accepted for registration.
She revealed that for the whole of 2013, her office registered 413 works in music and since January this year, 253 musical works have been registered.
Ms Attafua also said that her office has embarked on various public education campaigns, to educate the public on copyright issues, which are not only limited to the music industry.
Education
“Going further, we are even looking at copyright education or building respect for intellectual property in schools. It hasn’t yet taken off but we are trying to get to the schools to sensitise them so that copyright education starts early for our citizens,” she said.
According to her; “works such as literary works, artistic works, sound recordings in the form of music or audiovisual work, computer software and programmes and choreographic work are the only works that are eligible for automatic copyright protection.
For such works to be protected, the work must be original and must not include samples from other people’s work without permission. The work must also be expressed in some material form which can either be seen and touched physically or can be accessed with the aid of a device.”
She also disclosed that, copyright protection starts from the moment a work is created and spans the natural lifetime of the creator of the work. Copyright protection also extends to 70 years after the demise of the creator of the copyrighted work and only then does it come into the public domain.
Ms. Attafua further revealed that such works should be published in Ghana or if published outside, should have been published in Ghana 30 days after the publication outside to be eligible.
Advertisement