Universitetsbiblioteket er primært en informasjonsressurs for studenter og ansatte ved Universitetet i Agder. Biblioteket yter også tjenester til enkeltpersoner, nærings-, utdannings- og kulturlivet.
The purpose of copyright law is to protect owners of intellectual property. Protecting creative work is intended as an incentive to produce more creative work, which in turn will benefit society.
What is copyrightable and what is not?
The Berne convention dictates that copyrighted material must be “fixed in some material form” (WIPO 2022a, article 2 (2)) As such an idea is not copyrightable. For a work to be copyrightable, it needs to have a degree of originality, be a result of choices and have a certain degree of independence from other works. This is why creative work can build on copyrightable work and still receive its own copyright. Still, this work’s copyright will only be on the original parts, not all of it. E.g. a movie can have its own copyright, even though it is based on a copyrighted book. The movie's copyright would then be based on the movie’s originality (such as an original script) and what it added to the story, in addition to the technical aspects, i.e. the recording which constitutes a work's independence. The story will still belong to the author of the work the film is based on, however and the film is considered an adaptation.
The holder of the copyright must be a legal individual or organization. If a work is created by an entity not defined as such, it is not copyrightable. (Such as non-human animals.) (Wikipedia, 2022c).
Articles 8,9, 11 and 12 of the Berne convention covers translation, performance, distribution, copying and adaptation. Which includes adaptation of a literary work to film, for instance.
How to receive copyright protection
For the most part all that is required for a work to receive copyright protection is to actually do the work. “[t]he expression "literary and artistic works" shall include every production in the literary, scientific and artistic domain, whatever may be the mode or form of its expression” (WIPO 2022a, article 2(1)). From this moment the work is owned by its creator, or other entity paying for the creation of the work.
However there are numerous practical exceptions to this, and under certain conditions it can be prudent to register a product to strengthen the legal protection of said work, especially in certain countries and certain types of work. For instance registering sheet music, music lyrics and recordings with agencies like ASCAP in the USA, TONO in Norway or PRS in the United Kingdom (Wikipedia 2022b).