Rights of a copyright owner in India

A copyright is an intellectual property that is given for expression of an idea and not the idea per se. In India, Copyrights are given for creation of a computer programme, cinematographic film, sound recording and any original artistic, dramatic, musical and literary works. A copyright owner has the right of commercialisation of its IP and right of protection against any infringement.

The advancement in technology has enabled more and more people in the world today to create content and share it with anyone all over the world on social media platforms, blogs and journals, and digital publishing platforms such as medium, vocal media, hub pages and more. These platforms help people express their thoughts, opinions, and ideas through e-books, poems, blogs, articles, films, web series, short films, songs, and music. However, there is always a risk of unauthorized use and reproduction of the work leading to infringement of one's IP.

But before a person enforces his/her right of protetion against infringement, it is important to ascertain whether one is an owner of the copyright and not merely an author of the work?

In India, an author of a copyrightable work is someone who creates work out of his own labour and skill.

For example, you are an author if you are: 

-A producer of a film 

-An author of a book, blog post, etc. 

-A composer of a song 

-A photographer, clicking photos yourself. 

-An artist of a painting, drawing, a sketch, etc.

If you fall under any of the above mentioned, are you also the owner of the work you have created? 

-YES, but only if such work is created independently. If you produced a film, authored a book, composed a song, took photographs, or made works of art, under a contract of employment or under a service agreement for remuneration then the owner of the work created by you would be the person at whose instance such work was created for valuable consideration.

After establishing yourself as the rightful owner of the copyright, what are your rights as a copyright owner?

Being an owner gives you the right to exploit the work to your benefit and it is important to know your rights as a copyright owner under the Copyright Act, 1957 .

Let's say you're an amazing writer and have obtained a copyright on multiple books/poetry written by you or you are an app developer and have copyright over the program you created for an app or you're a musician and have copyright over the song written and sung by you, as a copyright owner, you have the right to:

-Reproduce the work 

-Issue copies of the work

-Perform or communicate your work in public 

-Make translation/adaptation of the work

-Sell your work

-Assign the copyright in the work to another person in exchange for royalty payable to him.

These rights may vary depending upon the type of work you have created. For Example, the producer of a film will have different rights as compared to a computer programmer. Section 14 of the Copyright Act, 1957 lists the exclusive rights of the copyright owners under different categories of copyrightable works. You can refer to the table below for an easier understanding of this section.

This article was first published on medium.com https://rupalilekhi.medium.com/what-are-the-rights-of-a-copyright-owner-in-india-acf1620f8242