Copyright And Moral Rights: Does Moral Right End On Death Of Author?

1. INTRODUCTION

Copyright has been in existence before the inception of printing technology and also predates the world's first true Copyright Act, the Statute of Anne.¹ The Copyright Act of 1709, was the first Act to explicitly recognize the legal right of authorship in a book, but it was only limited to printing and reprinting of books not owned by colleges and universities. This was remedied by the Copyright Act of 1755, which granted perpetual copyright to copies owned by colleges and universities, such as colleges of Eton, Westminster, and Winchester, as well as the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge.² Also, the enactment of the Copyright Act of 1911 brought about significant modifications to the United Kingdom's copyright laws.³