The principal purpose of copyright is to protect expression of thoughts and ideas. Copyright protects ‘literary and artistic works' and includes every production in the literary, scientific and artistic domain, whatever may be the mode or form of expression. The expressions ‘literary and artistic works' includes arts, writings, music, paintings and sculptures, software, etc and includes every original work of authorship. Copyright protects any new and original arrangement or compilation of material by an author by using his own skills, labour and capital.
The Bern Convention and the TRIPS Agreement stipulate the subsistence of copyright in original literary, dramatic, musical and artistic works; cinematographic film and sound recordings. These classes includes variety of works like books, pamphlets and other writings; lectures, addresses, sermons; dramatic or dramatic-musical works, choreographic works; musical composition, chirographic works; drawing, painting, architecture, sculpture, engraving; and lithography, photography, maps, plans, sketches, three dimensional works, translations, encyclopaedias and anthologies, software codes, multimedia productions, etc.
The duration of copyrights varies from country to country. The minimum duration of copyright protection under Bern Convention is 50 years. European Union and for countries of the European economic area and in the US the duration is 70 years. In India copyrights are protected for a period of sixty years from the beginning of the calendar year next following the year in which the author dies. The term of copyrights is calculated from the end of the year of the author's death.
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