Tag Archives: Berne Convention

Facebook Copyright Hoax

Have you recently seen copyright notices on some of your friends’ Facebook updates? They claim to prevent Facebook from owning or commercially exploiting their photos, videos and other content. The copyright notice implies that Facebook has recently changed the copyright provisions of its user agreement. It then asserts that user’s copyright over his Facebook posts. [...]

Copyright in South Africa

Copyright Law in South Africa Copyright in South Africa are government by the Copyright Act of 1978 and its amendments. CIPRO and DTI oversee copyright in the country. As a member of the Berne Convention and TRIPS Agreement, copyright works protected in South Africa are also protected in other member states of the above. Automatic [...]

Copyright Symbol

Copyright Dates

When you see several dates in a copyright statement, it simply means that certain things were created in one year and modified later. It could also mean that new things were created and added in a later year. It most definitely does not refer to the date that a copyright will expire. Expiration of a [...]

Moral Rights in Copyright

Moral rights refer to rights under copyright laws that protect the rights of the creators of the work. The moral rights fall within the scope of civil law and include rights such as the right to have a work published under a specific name or anonymous, and the right to have the integrity of the [...]

Historical overview of South African Copyright Law

The South African Copyright Law regulates all aspects of copyright in the country including the rights to compensation, acknowledgement, authorship, usage, and distribution of works protected under the South African Copyright Law. The main South African Copyright Laws are to be found in the 1978 Copyright Act and the amendment acts which have flown from [...]

Why apply for Copyright Protection?

In South Africa, like in most Berne Convention countries, copyright subsist in a qualified work, the moment that the work is created in physical form.  Therefore, no registration of copyright is necessary for copyright to subsist. Copyright provides exclusivity to the owner thereof to perform certain acts in respect of the works. In South Africa [...]

Copyright Applications

South Africa is one of the countries that adhere to the international Berne Convention, meaning that copyright applications aren’t necessary – the right automatically belongs to who is considered as the author of the work. The South African Copyright Act is quite clear on whom it considers to be the author – usually the creator [...]

Automatic copyright

In all countries where the Berne Convention standards apply, copyright is automatic, and need not be obtained through official registration with any government office. Once an idea has been reduced to tangible form, for example by securing it in a fixed medium (such as a drawing, sheet music, photograph, a videotape, or a computer file), [...]

Home | Copyright © Smit & Van Wyk, Inc