Copyright

Intellectual Copyright helps to protect your work from others who might pose it as their own. It serves as a deterrent to this end, but it can not stop theft of this kind in its tracks. What Copyright does, is provide a platform for you to launch countermeasures should this happen to you.

No one can own an idea. If you are inspired with an idea but do not physically create the work and someone else does, you have no rights to the image in question. It is now that other artists intellectual property and is covered by 'Automatic Right'.

Automatic Right is a form of Copyright that protects a persons intellectual property upon its initial creation. This happens mostly with images.

There are four main types of Copyright

• Patent - This protects an idea or invention and once filled, prevents any other company using this idea/invention for profit.
• Trademark - This is a companies signature. Companies like Disney, Dream Works, Dyson, Black and Decker etc.
• Designs.
• Copyright.

The Public Domain.



The Public Domain is were creative works are placed when they are no longer (or never were) protected by Copyright law. They are generally free to use and allow the user free access to create, or re-create as they like.

There are some works that enter the Public Domain automatically.

• Titles, names, phrases, slogans and symbols (these, however, maybe be protected by other laws, such as with a Patent or trademark).
• Ideas, facts (historical facts, dates, places etc).
• Processes, systems.
• Government works and documents.

The creator of the work may choose to release their work into the Public Domain, however for those who wish to protect their intellectual property, Copyright will restrict usage of the creation, until the artist has been dead for seventy years.

How can I protect my work?

As I'm creating images and works of a visual nature, my work is automatically protected upon creation. However, this alone will not stop unlawful duplicates or even other artists from claiming my work as their own.

The emergence of the internet has made the sharing or work and the ability to create social circles much easier, but it has also made it easier for intellectual property to be stolen and while it's possible to deter the thieves, with water marks and limiting exposure of the work itself (especially on social media), it doesn't always work.