Buy the book
Menu

International copyright

As international trade and communications started developing in the 19th century, so was recognition given to the need for protecting intellectual property on an international basis. As the recent Brexit phenomenon has shown, it is not always a simple thing to harmonise the commercial and legal expectations of several different countries, each with their own cultural, historic, societal, and economic demands, requirements and perceptions.

The Berne Convention was established in 1896 in Paris and has been revised many times since. Effectively, it is a treaty signed by most countries around the world (including South Africa) to regulate how copyright in works originating in one nation have protection in other nations. There are other treaties, but the Berne Convention is the main one.

The underlying principle is this. The operation of our Copyright Act has been extended to works originating in Berne Convention countries so that they will be given the same protection in South Africa that applies to works originating in South Africa. The subsistence and ownership of the copyright in such foreign works are established on more or less the same basis as well. Conversely, South African works are likewise given protection in foreign countries.

There is an exception to this basis of protection, called the reciprocity principle of protection. In the case of sound recordings and published editions, the extent of protection in South Africa to foreign works will not be greater than is given to those works in the country of their origin. This can be significant because, for example, the United States of America does not recognise the needletime right. The owners of copyright in sound recordings do not get a needletime royalty for radio play in the United States. So, for sound recordings coming from the United States, no needletime royalty is payable in South Africa. (In November 2019 a bill was introduced in the United States Congress to change this, but it seems to be far from enactment.)

Read section 37 of the Copyright Act; General Notice 136/1989 published in Government Gazette 11718 of 3 March 1989.

That brings us (almost) to the end of our walk through copyright. In conclusion, before we look at designs, the table below has a ready checklist on the basics of copyright ownership.