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Basic Exclusive Copyright Rights Explained
Understanding the different copyright rights is essential if you are for instance, an author. Smit & van Wyk has an excellent team of intellectual property lawyers specialising in all fields of copyright rights and who will be able to not only provide advice, but also to handle litigation, license agreements, assignments, and infringement disputes as well as registrations on your behalf.
A few types of exclusive copyright rights are briefly discussed below, for more information or assistance view our copyright section or contact our office.
The copyright owner of a work can reserve exclusive rights over the work, meaning that the person would be the only one who can exploit the rights or assign the rights to another party by means of a license agreement. The copyright owner can however, terminate an assignment of rights at a later stage and is not bound indefinitely by an agreement.
One of the exclusive rights is the right to reproduce a work. Although you may copy a part of a work, you cannot reproduce a work without permission and or the rights to the work. You may quote a few words from a work with the proper acknowledgement, but reprinting or using large parts of work without the proper permission, acknowledgement or rights to do so, can constitute a copyright infringement. Only the rightful owner of the copyrights can reproduce the work or provide permission to another to do so.
Another one of the exclusive rights is the right to make a work that derives from the original work. This means if you are the copyright owner, you will have the right to transform a work into another work. A rights holder has the right to distribute a work and to determine how the work will be distributed.
If you are unsure of your copyright rights on a work created by you, need assistance in setting up a license agreement, want to register a film production or want help in an infringement case, contact us at Smit & Van Wyk today.
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