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How to Register Copyright for Music, Poetry or Song

Author
Managing Partner / Patent Attorney of the Russian Federation / Eurasian Patent Attorney

As is known, music, poetry and songs are works and are objects of copyright, which the law provides legal protection and defense. However, not everyone knows that for the emergence of copyright on these objects of intellectual property, no registration or compliance with other formalities is required, which directly follows from Clause 4, Article 1259 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation. In this regard, questions often arise about how an author can obtain rights to a work or protect them in the event of unauthorized use, how another person can obtain the right to use a work without violating copyright, etc. We will talk about this in our article.

Copyright of a work, including music, poetry or song - what is it

Copyright for a work is a whole complex of rights that initially arise for the author of the work by virtue of the very fact of its creation.

In particular, two groups of rights are distinguished:

  • Personal non-property rights, which include:
  1. Right of authorship, i.e. the right to be recognized as the author of a work (Article 1265 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation);
  2. The author's right to a name, i.e. the right to use or permit the use of a work under his own name, under a fictitious name - a pseudonym, or without specifying a name - anonymously (Article 1265 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation);
  3. The right to the inviolability of a work, which includes the right to change, shorten, supplement the work, provide it with illustrations, a preface, an afterword, comments, etc. (Article 1266 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation);
  4. The right to make a work public, i.e. to perform actions that make the work available to other persons for the first time (public performance, posting on the Internet, etc.). In this case, the work may be made public even after the death of the author by a person who has an exclusive right to the work, if this does not contradict the will of the author, specifically expressed by him in writing, for example, in a will, letters or diaries (Article 1268 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation);
  5. The right to withdraw a work, which means that the author has the right to refuse a previously made decision to publish the work before it is actually published.

The rights that belong to this group always remain with the author of the work. They cannot be alienated or transferred to other persons, therefore they are also called inalienable (non-transferable) rights.

  • Property rights, which include the exclusive right to a work. The exclusive right includes the following powers:
  1. The right to use the work in any form and in any way that does not contradict the law (perform, distribute, reproduce on tangible media, etc.). This also means that only the copyright holder can use the work, and all other persons - exclusively with his consent on the basis of an agreement, except in cases of free use.
  2. The right to dispose of an exclusive right, i.e. to alienate it by agreement to another person or to grant the right to use the work within the limits established by the license agreement.

How long does copyright on a work last?

The duration of copyright depends on the group to which it belongs.

Thus, personal non-property (non-transferable) rights – the right of authorship, the right to a name and the inviolability of a work, have no term of validity, i.e. they are protected indefinitely (Article 1267 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation).

The exclusive right to a work, as a general rule, is valid for the entire life of the author and seventy years, counting from January 1 of the year following the year of the author's death (Article 1281 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation). After the expiration of the term or if the author has no heirs, the work enters the public domain - this means that any person can freely use the work in any legal way without concluding an agreement and paying remuneration (Articles 1282, 1283 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation).

How can authorship be confirmed?

As noted above, copyright arises for the author automatically by virtue of the very fact of creating a work in objective form, i.e. its expression (recording) on any material medium.

In this regard, the fact that the right belongs to a specific author can be confirmed by any evidence, both written and material, including source materials on the creation of the work, explanations of witnesses to the creation process, a notarized copy of the work, a certificate of its deposit, etc.

At the same time, at the moment, one of the most convenient ways to confirm rights to a work is considered to be deposit. This is a voluntary procedure that is not provided for by law, but is carried out at the initiative of the author himself by contacting an organization that provides the relevant services on a paid basis. As a result of deposit, the organization enters the work into a specialized registry and issues the author a certificate of registration and deposit of the work. Deposit is recommended to be carried out before the publication of the work.

In Russia, several organizations provide services for depositing works, for example the following:

However, it is important to understand that the deposit itself is not an absolute proof of the creation of the work by a specific author, but in the event of a dispute it is accepted by the court as proof of authorship (copyright ownership), unless the other party can provide evidence to refute this fact.

In this regard, in addition to depositing, we recommend that when making a work public, for example, when it is first posted on the Internet, you also post information about the author of the work and the copyright sign (Article 1271 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation), and also preserve the original materials on the creation of the work.

How to check music for rights

Initially, it should be assumed that even if music is posted without indicating the author (copyright holder) or without a copyright sign, and there is free access to it, this in itself does not mean that it can be freely used except for its intended purpose.

There are special electronic services that allow you not only to identify the author (copyright holder) of music, but also to obtain a license for the right to use it. In this case, licenses can be either paid or free, depending on the methods of using the music or other licensing conditions. For example, on the Free Music Archive service, you can buy a license to use music or get access to a free archive of works.

You can determine whether your music is copyrighted using the eProves service, the YouTube audio library, the registers of the Russian Authors' Society, the VKontakte Music social network, etc.

When rights are not violated

In addition to situations where a work is used under an appropriate license or enters the public domain, there are also other cases of legal use of a work by third parties during the term of the copyright.

Freely, i.e. without the consent of the author (copyright holder), a work can be used when it is necessary in the public interest. The list of such cases is limited and specified in Articles 1273 - 1279 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation. These include, in particular:

  • reproduction for personal purposes, public performance of a lawfully published musical work (Articles 1273, 1277 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation);
  • use for informational, scientific, educational or cultural purposes, as well as by libraries, archives and educational organizations (Articles 1274, 1275 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation);
  • reproduction for law enforcement purposes , recording of a work by a broadcasting organization for the purpose of short-term use (Articles 1278, 1279 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation).

We hope that our article will be useful both to the authors of the works and to those who plan to use them. And if you have any questions, the specialists of Zuykov and Partners are ready to promptly come to the rescue and resolve them.

Author
Managing Partner / Patent Attorney of the Russian Federation / Eurasian Patent Attorney