Authors' rights

'Author's rights' is a term frequently used in connection with laws about intellectual property. 'Author's rights' is a term frequently used in connection with laws about intellectual property. The term is considered as a direct translation of the French term droit d’auteur (also German Urheberrecht). It was first (1777) promoted in France by Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais, who had close relations with Benjamin Franklin. It is generally used in relation to the copyright laws of civil law countries and in European Union law. Authors' rights are internationally protected by the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works and by other similar treaties. “Author” is used in a very wide sense, and includes composers, artists, sculptors and even architects: in general, the author is the person whose creativity led to the protected work being created, although the exact definition varies from country to country. Authors’ rights have two distinct components: the economic rights in the work and the moral rights of the author. The economic rights are a property right which is limited in time and which may be transferred by the author to other people in the same way as any other property (although many countries require that the transfer must be in the form of a written contract). They are intended to allow the author or their holder to profit financially from his or her creation, and include the right to authorize the reproduction of the work in any form (Article 9, Berne Convention). The authors of dramatic works (plays, etc.) also have the right to authorize the public performance of their works (Article 11, Berne Convention). The protection of the moral rights of an author is based on the view that a creative work is in some way an expression of the author’s personality: the moral rights are therefore personal to the author, and cannot be transferred to another person except by testament when the author dies. The moral rights regime differs greatly between countries, but typically includes the right to be identified as the author of the work and the right to object to any distortion or mutilation of the work which would be prejudicial to his or her honor or reputation (Article 6bis, Berne Convention). In many countries, the moral rights of an author are perpetual. It is common to draw a distinction in the treatment of authors and other interested parties between common law jurisdictions and civil law systems. Both copyright and authors’ rights arose in the eighteenth century to address similar problems: the inequality in relations between authors and publishers (and between publishers themselves) if intellectual property is not recognized and protected, and the need to provide an income for authors other than patronage. Both systems provide for a monopoly right granted to the author for a limited term which can be transferred to another person, which was initially the right to copy or otherwise reproduce the work (hence “copyright”) but has since been expanded to take account of technological developments. It is an essential feature of authors’ rights and of many copyright laws that the object which is protected must arise from the creativity of the author rather than from his or her simple effort or investment (see Feist v. Rural in the United States): both French and German copyright laws protect “works of the mind” (oeuvres de l'esprit and persönliche geistige Schöpfungen, respectively). This has led civil law systems to adopt a strong link between the rights (at least initially) and the person of the author: the initial ownership rights by a corporation are severely restricted or even impossible (as in Germany). Common law jurisdictions are more willing to accept corporate ownership of copyright, as in the U. S. work for hire principle. Although the following comparison is simplistic and dependent on the exact laws of individual countries, it is difficult to see an effective (economic) difference in the two situations: Civil law systems have also been forceful in protecting the moral rights of authors, arguing that their creativity deserves protection as an integral part of their personality. The protection of the personality in common law jurisdiction has for long been separate from the law of copyright, embodied in such torts as defamation (also passing off and malicious falsehood). Moral rights were not, therefore, explicitly mentioned in UK copyright law until 1988, over a century after the United Kingdom signed the Berne Convention. The difference runs both ways: UK and Irish copyright laws protect the privacy of the subject of certain photographs and films as a moral right under copyright law, while civil law systems treat this as a separate portrait right. The different protections of industrial design rights cut across the divide between the two systems of law. The term “authors’ rights” is used in European Union law to avoid ambiguity, in preference to the more usual translation of droit d’auteur etc. as “copyright”. The equivalent term in British and Irish law is “copyright (subsisting) in a literary, dramatic, musical or artistic work”; the term in Maltese and Cypriot law is similar, except that dramatic works are treated as a subset of literary works.