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ARTICLE · 23 MARCH 2011

Authorship and copyright protection

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Authorship is central to copyright protection. The Courts have recently dealt with the issue a number of times to the detriment of the party attempting to rely upon copyright.

AustraliaIntellectual Property
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By Scott Sloan and Michael Sutton

Authorship is central to copyright protection. The Courts have recently dealt with the issue a number of times to the detriment of the party attempting to rely upon copyright.

The issue of authorship, and particularly "joint authorship", has had an important role to play.

A common theme emerging from recent cases is that technological developments in the way people work can make it more difficult to meet the authorship requirements for copyright protection under the Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act). This has been an unpleasant surprise for some who have tried to rely on copyright protection.

Authorship

Under the Act, the general rule is that the first owner of a copyright work created is the "author" of that work (i.e. the person that produced or created that work).

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