History Of IPR : Copyright

Copyright was invented after the advent of the printing press and subsequent widening of public literacy. As a legal concept, its origins in Britain were from a reaction to printers’ monopolies at the beginning of the eighteenth century. In Britain the King of England and Scotland was concerned by the unregulated copying of books and used the royal prerogative to pass the Licensing Act of 1662 which established a register of licensed books and required a copy to be deposited with the Stationers Company, essentially continuing the licensing of material for the benefit of printers that had long been in effect.

The Statute of Anne in 1709 was the first real copyright act, and gave the author in the new state of Britain rights for a fixed period, after which the copyright expired. Internationally, the Berne Convention in 1887 set out the scope of copyright protection, and is still in force to this day. Copyright has grown from a legal concept regulating copying rights in the publishing of books and maps to one with a significant effect on nearly every modern industry, covering such items as sound recordings, films, photographs, software, and architectural works

Modern copyright has been influenced by an array of older legal rights that have been recognized throughout history, including the moral rights of the author who created a work, the economic rights of a benefactor who paid to have a copy made, the property rights of the individual owner of a copy, and a sovereign’s right to censor and to regulate the printing industry

Prior to the invention of movable type in the West in the mid-fifteenth century, texts were copied by hand and the small number of texts generated few occasions for these rights to be tested. Even during a period of a prospering book trade, during the Roman Empire when no copyright or similar regulations existed, copying by those other than professional booksellers was rare. This is because books were, typically, copied by literate slaves, who were expensive to buy and maintain.

Thus, any copier would have had to pay much the same expense as a professional publisher. Roman book sellers would sometimes pay a well regarded author for first access to a text for copying, but they had no exclusive rights to a work and authors were not normally paid anything for their work.

The Copyright Act in India came into existence in 1842 A.D. during the British Regime. Many changes were effected in the first copyright act known as amendments. The present Copyright Act is the outcome of these amendments that have taken effect over the years and a list of the amendments that took place are:

• The Copyright Act of 1842

 

• The Copyright Act of 1911

 

•  The Copyright Act of 1957 (Amendments were reinforced after Constitution of India was established) — The Indian Law of Copyrights is enshrined in the Copyright Act of 1957.

 

•  The Copyright Amendment Act, 1999

 

No such recorded history is available as to the first copyright in India . It is worthwhile noting here that Copyright is the oldest form of Intellectual Property (IP) to exist.

International Copyright Protection

India is a member of both Berne and Universal Conventions and Indian law extends protection to all copyrighted works originating from any of the convention countries. Foreign works first published in a country which is a member of either of the Conventions would be accorded the same copyright protection in India as Indian works without undergoing any formalities, on the assumption that the home country accords reciprocity to Indian works.