Over time, each work has a certain “life cycle” of protection according to the provisions of the law on copyright. When this protection period ends, the property rights of the author or owner of the work are no longer protected by law, and the work will belong to the public. However, in reality, there are still many cases that raise the question: can a work whose protection period has expired be re-registered to continue to be protected? The following article by VCD will help you.
1. Regulations on the term of copyright protection.
According to the current Intellectual Property Law, copyright can be understood as the rights of organizations and individuals to works they create or own, including personal rights and property rights.
Article 27 of the Law on Intellectual Property stipulates the term of copyright protection in detail as follows:
- First of all, the term of protection for personal rights will be indefinite except for the right to publish the work or allow others to publish the work.
- Then the term of protection for this right to publish will be similar to that of property rights, with each type of protection term being different as follows:
- Cinematographic works, photographic works, applied fine arts works, anonymous works have a term of protection of 75 years from the date of first publication;
- Cinematographic works, photographic works, applied fine arts works that have not been published within 25 years from the date of creation of the work, the term of protection is 100 years from the date of creation of the work;
- In the case of anonymous works, when information about the author appears or the work does not belong to the above-mentioned type, the protection period is calculated as the entire life of the author and 50 years following the year of the author’s death; in the case of works with co-authors, the protection period ends in the fiftieth year after the year of the death of the last co-author.
Note: This protection period ends at 24:00 on December 31 of the year in which the copyright protection period ends.
Property rights are exclusively exercised by the author, copyright owner or allowed to be exercised by others in accordance with the provisions of the Law on Intellectual Property. Organizations and individuals when exploiting, using one, some or all of the above rights must ask for permission and pay royalties, remuneration, and other material benefits to the copyright owner.
2. Can a work whose protection period has expired be re-registered?
According to the above analysis, the copyright protection period is divided into two groups: personal rights and property rights. In which, some personal rights such as the right to name, the right to stand in the name, the right to protect the integrity of the work, etc. are protected indefinitely. On the contrary, property rights, i.e. the right to exploit, copy, distribute, and communicate the work, are only protected for a certain period of time depending on the type of work (usually the author’s lifetime and 50 years after the author’s death).
When the property rights protection period expires, the work will belong to the public. This means that any individual or organization can exploit and use that work without asking for permission or paying compensation to the author or previous owner, as long as the personal rights are respected (no distortion, cutting, or falsification of the content or origin of the work).
Therefore, a work whose protection period has expired cannot be re-registered for copyright. Because registration is only to record the rights that are still in effect, while for works belonging to the public, the property rights of the author or owner have ended. Re-registration, if any, will have no legal value and will not be accepted by the competent state agency.
However, if an individual or organization creates, edits, or develops a work that is already in the public domain (for example, translation, adaptation, adaptation, re-illustration, etc.), the new derivative work can be registered for copyright separately. In this case, the protection only applies to the new creation and does not include the original content that is already in the public domain.
In conclusion, copyright registration is an administrative procedure to record existing rights, not the basis for creating rights. Therefore, re-registration of works whose protection period has expired has no legal basis. At the same time, the Copyright Office can only issue a Certificate when the author or owner’s rights are still valid. Once the work is in the public domain, all property rights have ended, so re-registration will not be accepted.
Above is the article “Can a work that has expired its protection period be re-registered?” that VCD sent to you. We hope this article is useful to you.
Sincerely,