Last week we explained how important it is to protect your work with Copyright or Creative Commons licences. This week we’re looking at the difference between these two types of licences.

Copyright

Copyright is a right that belongs to the creator of a piece of work and is the means by which the conditions of use and commercialisation of the piece are established. Copyright is just a part (the “commercial” part) of Intellectual Property Rights.

Intellectual Property Rights

Intellectual Property Rights are some of the most important rights and are recognised by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Intellectual Property Rights recognises the author of a piece of work, which can avoid possible conflicts of interest between the authors, publishers or any other intermediary that distributes their work, and the public in its role as the end-user if their work.

The difference between Copyright and Intellectual Property Rights.

Unlike Intellectual Property Rights that recognise the creator (any natural person) of an original piece of work, copyright is a right that only comes into play when the work is fixed, written or recorded in some way. Copyright protects the work but not the author. In other words, Intellectual Property Rights recognise the rights of the author over his/her work, while copyright recognises a negotiation between the author and society for the use and distribution of the work.

Copyright only refers to the economic rights of a piece of work due to the work being consider a consumer product, and as such, the proprietor of a copyright protected work can sell or concede his/her property to other people. However, moral rights, characteristic of Intellectual Property Rights, prevent this from happening.

Copyright and Intellectual Property Rights can vary from one country to the next, for this reason, we strongly advise you to review the current legislation in your country in order to ensure that your rights and work are properly protected.