Post 9: Copyright Act 1987

Copyright is legally binding to protect author or creator of an original work, including the right of copy and distribute. Many company will fill copyright, trademark, patents, industrial design rights, trade secrets on their intellectual properties because those are intangible asset for a company.

The intellectual property is a term referring to the creations of the mind. Creation of the mind include music, note, novel, artistic works, discoveries and inventions, design and even any words, symbol and buildings.

Why need to generate copyright?
Simple, this is to protect your work from pirating by other or vice verse.

How to generate copyright?
To generate the copyright, there are two very important element you must know:

1) Originally - the creation must not be copied from others, and must creative enough
2) Fixation - the thing that you wish to fill copyright must at least reduced to a fix form, like paper or book

Note: Idea is not copyrightable.

Do we need to register to get protected?
Copyright itself doesn't not need an official registeration, any created work is considered protected by copyright as soon as the work exists. But certain countries have a national copyright office and some national laws allow the created work to be registered, during any copyright cases those registered will be serve as the highest important evidence in the court.

In Malaysia, the national copyright office is call Intellectual Property Corporation of Malaysia. You can visit the web http://www.myipo.gov.my/.

How to consider copyright infringement?
When a person publishes copyrighted materials, publicly display or performs copyrighted material or performs any act that reduces the value of the copyrighted works.

But however, certain product is not considered as infringement of copyright if the copyrighted material is used for purposes of non-profit research, private study, criticism, review or the reporting of current events. For those we call it as Fair Use, but if this product would like to use it in public, then it must be accompanied by acknowledgement of the title of the work and its authorship.