Enforcing Copyright

June 24, 2009
Intellectual Property News and Interesting Facts

Copyrights are generally enforced by the holder in a civil law court, but there are also criminal infringement statutes in some jurisdictions.

While central registries are kept in some countries, which aid in proving claims of ownership, registering does not necessarily prove ownership, nor does the fact of copying (even without permission) necessarily prove that copyright was infringed.

Criminal sanctions are generally aimed at serious counterfeiting activity, but are now becoming more commonplace as copyright collectives such as the RIAA are increasingly targeting the file sharing home Internet user.

Thus far, however, most such cases against file sharers have been settled out of court.

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