Copyright Resources

The following resources all relate to copyright issues and are a collection of website's which may be of interest to users of our site. This part of the site is where you will find some information on a wide variety of topics.

DEFINITION OF COPYRIGHT:

Before you go any further you need to know that there is no official register for copyright. It is an unregistered right (unlike patents, registered designs or trade marks). So, there is no official action to take , (no application to make, forms to fill in or fees to pay). Copyright comes into effect immediately, as soon as something that can be protected is created and "fixed" in some way, eg on paper, on film, via sound recording, as an electronic record on the internet, etc.

It is a good idea for you to mark your copyright work with the copyright symbol © followed by your name and the date, to warn others against copying it, but it is not legally necessary in the UK .

The type of works that copyright protects are:

- original literary works, e.g. novels, instruction manuals, computer programs, lyrics for songs, articles in newspapers, some types of databases, but not names or titles (see Trademark Resources pages for for information about registered and unregistered trade marks);

- original dramatic works, including works of dance or mime;

- original musical works;

- original artistic works, e.g. paintings, engravings, photographs, sculptures, collages, works of architecture, technical drawings, diagrams, maps, logos;

- published editions of works, i.e. the typographical arrangement of a publication;

- sound recordings, which may be recordings on any medium, e.g. tape or compact disc, and may be recordings of other copyright works, e.g. musical or literary;

- films, including videos; and

- broadcasts.

COPYRIGHT ON THE INTERNET:

Under UK law copyright material sent over the Internet or stored on web servers will generally be protected in the same way as material in other media. So anyone wishing to put copyright material on the Internet, or further distribute or download such material that others have placed on the Internet, should ensure that they have the permission of the owners of rights in the material.

Generally, when you put your work on a web site, it is probably a good idea to mark each page of the web site with the international © mark followed by the name of the copyright owner and year of publication. In addition, you could include information on your web site about the extent to which you are content for others to use your copyright material without permission. Although material on a web site is protected by copyright in the same way as material in other media, you should bear in mind that web sites are accessible from all over the world and, if material on your web site is used without your permission, you would generally need to take action for copyright infringement where this use occurs.

SFS review all sites before permitting inclusion in this section of our site but can not be held responsible for the content of any site contained within this section.

If you feel your site would be of interest to our visitors please contact us. If you have a similar section on your site and feel your site visitors could benefit from visiting us please implement our listing as follows -

Apostille - UK Service offering professional document legalisation of any document

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