Copyright law of the United Kingdom

Under the law of the United Kingdom, a copyright is an intangible property right subsisting in certain qualifying subject matter. Copyright law is governed by the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 (the 1988 Act), as amended from time to time. As a result of increasing legal integration and harmonisation throughout the European Union a complete picture of the law can only be acquired through recourse to EU jurisprudence, On 12 September 2018, the European Parliament approved new copyright rules to help secure the rights of writers and musicians. History of copyright law Copyright protection in Britain dates back to the 1556 Charter of the Worshipful Company of Stationers and Newspaper Makers. The Licensing of the Press Act 1662 gave publishers exclusive printing rights, but did not give any rights to authors. Parliament failed to renew the Act in 1694, primarily to remove monopoly and encourage a free press. The modern concept of copyright originated in Great Britain, in the year 1710, with the Statute of Anne. This Act prescribed a copyright term of fourteen years, and let the author renew for another fourteen years, after which the work went into the public domain. Over the years, additional acts and case law steadily refined the definitions of what could be protected, including derivative works, and the degree of protection given. Copyright law is now governed by the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. This Act came into force on 1 August 1989, save for some minor provisions. Various amendments have been made to the original statute, mostly originating from Copyright law of the European Union and related case law.

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Fair dealing

Fair dealing is a limitation and exception to the exclusive rights granted by copyright law to the author of a creative work. Fair dealing is found in many of the common law jurisdictions of the Commonwealth of Nations. Fair dealing is an enumerated set of possible defences against an action for infringement of an exclusive right of copyright. Unlike the related United States doctrine of fair use, fair dealing cannot apply to any act which does not fall within one of these categories, although common law courts in some jurisdictions are less stringent than others in this regard.

Public domain

The public domain (PD) consists of all the creative work to which no exclusive intellectual property rights apply. Those rights may have expired, been forfeited, expressly waived, or may be inapplicable. Because no one holds the exclusive rights, anyone can legally use or reference those works without permission. As examples, the works of William Shakespeare, Ludwig van Beethoven, Leonardo da Vinci and Georges Méliès are in the public domain either by virtue of their having been created before copyright existed, or by their copyright term having expired.

A copyright is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the exclusive right to copy, distribute, adapt, display, and perform a creative work, usually for a limited time. The creative work may be in a literary, artistic, educational, or musical form. Copyright is intended to protect the original expression of an idea in the form of a creative work, but not the idea itself. A copyright is subject to limitations based on public interest considerations, such as the fair use doctrine in the United States.

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