Prior to 2015, there was no statutory registration system in
Jamaica and no requirement for registration under the Copyright
Act. With the passage of Jamaica's Copyright Act of 1993, the
government of Jamaica policy was to not impose a statutory system
of copyright registration based on the principle of automatic
protection under the Berne Convention, i.e. copyright protection
must not be conditional upon compliance with any formality.
In 2000 a non-profit, non-governmental organisation, the
Intellectual Property Service Centre (IPC), created a voluntary
copyright recordation and deposit facility in conjunction with
National Library of Jamaica, where copyright owners could file
their ownership claims to copyright and deposit a copy of their
work, to establish a public record of their claims. IPC became a
nationally recognized voluntary copyright registration
facility.
