Black's Law Dictionary's (336) definition of intellectual property is "a category of intangible rights protecting commercially valuable products of the human intellect. The category comprises primarily trademark, copyright, and patent rights, but also includes trade-secret rights, publicity rights, moral rights, and rights against unfair competition."

Encyclopedia Britannica Online says, "Copyright is the exclusive, legally secured right to publish, reproduce, and sell the matter and form of a literary, musical, dramatic, or artistic work."  This protection is available to published and unpublished works. It actually protects the form or way an idea is represented. It legally secures right to publish, reproduce, and sell a created work.

Quite often, copyright is interpreted as intellectual property that has a similar but not exactly the same meaning. Intellectual property is a broader term that includes all kinds of human creations and is divided into two categories: industrial property and copyright.

Inventions (patents), trademarks, industrial design, geographical indications belong to the industrial property category; while literary and artistic works, and their performances belong to the copyright category.

"Copyright protects the expression of an idea, not the idea itself." (West's Encyclopedia of American Law)  Copyright category covers literary works and their radio, TV, theater, and movie performances; musical compositions and their performances,  including scenography and choreography; architectural design and technical drawing, sculpture, painting and drawing, photography, computer programs, databases, maps, newspapers, news, advertisement, commercials, and reference works. Copyright includes also the rights of performing artists, directors, conductors, and producers.
 
 

Copyright protects original creators and owners, or their legal descendants, and gives them the exclusive right over the use of the work. This right is called royalty. It also gives authors the moral right to oppose changes to their original works, trade secret rights, publicity rights and rights against unfair competition. It gives copyright holders a monopoly or exclusive right to reproduce and distribute the works, create derivative works, and to perform or display the works in public. Very often, the creators, or their heirs, sell copyright privileges to benefit financially. The right to sell copyright privileges is limited in time. Copyright runs through the end of the expiring calendar year. Some countries, however, can impose a different time limit for copyright.

A created work gets its copyright at the moment of creation, but usually authors register them in a national copyright office.
"... owners of copyright cannot sue for copyright infringement until they have registered the copyright."  Created works can appear in different media formats: print, CD, video, manuscript, photographs, etc.  The notice of copyright must be affixed to every copy in a reasonable location to be noticed by users. The notice must contain the symbol ©, the word "Copyright", or the abbreviation "Copr.", together with the year of the first publication, and the name of the copyright holder.

"Some works are not copyrightable because they are not fixed in a tangible medium. These include unrecorded dance choreography, and unrecorded speeches, lectures, and other vocal performances. A dramatic character is not copyrightable either." (West's Encyclopedia of American Law)
 

Owners of the copyright can sue those who illegally use created works, and get compensation for their financial loss. In 1991, Kinko Graphics Corp. was accused and sued by publishers for violating copyright laws. In court proceedings, different terms like piracy, plagiarism, forgery, and infringement are used during discussions of copyright. Piracy is a violation of owner's legal rights; especially their right to royalties. Infringement is a violation or transgression of law, and can be unintentional or intentional. Unintentional infringement is also called innocent infringement.
 
 

While the terms plagiarism and forgery are commonly used for the act of stealing a created work and representing it as your own,  "the range of forgeries extends from misrepresentation of a genuine work of art to the outright counterfeiting of a work or style of an artist." (Encyclopedia Britannica Online)   Throughout history, it has been known that many authors borrowed ideas and represented them as their own. Sometimes it is very difficult to define if plagiarisms have been done consciously or unconsciously. Courts have the difficult obligation to make a decision; analyzing and comparing "similarities, dissimilarities and common errors" (Salzman 42) found in disputed works. Unfortunately, some forgeries have remained undiscovered for centuries; while other will be mistaken as originals forever.

Many famous authors, such as Albert Einstein and Charles Chaplin, among the others, have been accused of plagiarism. Recently, newspapers have reported that J.K. Rowling, author of the Harry Potter series, was accused of stealing the idea for stories from an American author.  In his work, Plagiarism, Maurice Salzman addresses this issue when he states, "Two things are certain: any writer who publishes or produces runs a grave risk both of being robbed and of being accused of robbery."  (Salzman xv)

"Read Tasso, and you think of Virgil; read Virgil, and you think of Homer; and Milton forces you to reflect how narrow are the limits of human invention." (Salzman 1)
 
 
 

Relevant Web pages:

Bora Laskin Law Library - Intellectual property

Copyrightlaws.com - Information for the 21st Century

Cornell University Law School

Florida College of Law

Intellectual Property Center