Copyright FAQs

Copyright is a form of intellectual property right. It gives the creator the right to decide how their work will be used. Copyright provides content users with a set of guidelines that enable them to access and share published material in a fair way.

In most cases, copyright lasts for the creator’s lifetime plus 70 years. For ease of calculation, a work goes out of copyright on 1st January of the 71st year. James Joyce’s body of published work entered the public domain in Ireland on 1st January 2012, 71 years after he died in 1941.

In relation to a film copyright expires 70 years after the death of the last of the principal director, author of the screenplay, author of the dialogue and the composer of any music composed especially for the film.

Sound recordings, broadcasts and the typographical arrangement of a published edition have related copyright protection for 50 years from the first fixation, broadcast or publication.

In Ireland, copyright law is contained in the Copyright & Related Rights Act, 2000. Copyright protects:

• original literary, dramatic, musical and artistic works (traditionally called the ‘classical’ copyrights)
• film, sound recordings, broadcasts and the typographical arrangement of published editions (often called ‘related rights’, because they involve the exploitation of ‘classical’ works)
• computer software and non-original databases (despite their modest credentials as ‘creative’ works)
• performances

Copyright does not protect ideas, concepts, styles, techniques, data or information. For example, if you write an outline of your idea for a TV show, the outline itself will be protected by copyright. However, another person could write their own script using your general ideas without necessarily infringing copyright. The other person would only be infringing your copyright in the outline if they started copying enough of the way you had, for example, structured your plot.

Some ‘works’ are too small or unoriginal to be protected as copyright works. For example, single words, names, titles, slogans and headlines are unlikely to be protected by copyright – although they may be protected in other ways, for example as trademarks.

A work is protected automatically from the time it is first written down or recorded in some way, provided that it has resulted from the creator’s skill and effort and is not simply copied from another work.

Copyright does not protect ideas, concepts, styles, techniques, data or information. For example, if you write an outline of your idea for a TV show, the outline itself will be protected by copyright. However, another person could write their own script using your general ideas without necessarily infringing copyright.

There is no system of registration for copyright protection in Ireland as copyright arises automatically on the creation of an original work. You do not need to publish your work, to put a copyright notice on it or do anything else to be covered by copyright – protection is free and automatic.

A work is protected automatically from the time it is first written down or recorded in some way, provided that it has resulted from the creator’s skill and effort and is not simply copied from another work.

Depending on the circumstances, it may be difficult for an author to prove that he or she had created a work at a specific point in time. Proof of this fact might be needed in an action for infringement. An author can create such proof by sending a copy of the work to himself or herself by registered post, keeping the post office receipt and leaving the envelope unopened.

A copyright notice does not need to be placed on a work before it is protected by copyright. However, it is prudent to do so as it reminds people that the work is protected and identifies the person claiming the rights. The notice usually consists of the symbol © followed by the name of the author and the date of creation.

If a work is made available for the public to view, then it can be said to have been published. This can be gratis or for a price. Unpublished works are those that have not been made available for the public to view.

The act of making a work available for the public to view relates to the offering of the work to the public whether or not the public takes up the offer. The ‘making available’ right is owned by the copyright holder or exclusively licensed to a publisher by the copyright holder, and is infringed if the making available is done without the rightsholders’ consent, or if technical measures to limit access to the work are circumvented.

In copyright terms, ‘in the public domain’ means that the work is no longer subject to any copyright restrictions due to expiration of the copyright protection term, or because the work pre-dated any international copyright protection legislation. Just because a work or image is publicly available online, does not mean that it is free to use or reuse same, nor is it in the public domain. Freely available does not equate to free to use.

A work is no longer protected by copyright in the 71st year after its creator’s death. It can then be said to be ‘in the public domain’ and can be freely copied or re-published.

There are other reasons why a work can be ‘in the public domain’:

• its creator decides that it should be freely available and waives their economic and moral rights
• its creator decides it should be published ‘open access’ under no or some restrictions of the creator’s choosing
• the creator decides to publish the work under a Creative Commons licence

If a copyright work is published on the internet without any barriers to accessing it, it can be said to be ‘open access’. It is the copyright holder’s decision to make it available open access or subject to restrictions (e.g. behind a paywall) and to make clear under what terms it can be accessed, quoted, attributed and re-used.

The Creative Commons suite of licences were developed to: ‘forge a balance inside the traditional “all rights reserved” setting that copyright law creates’ and to ‘give everyone from individual creators to large companies and institutions a simple, standardized way to grant copyright permissions to their creative work.’ The various Creative Commons licences give different levels of protection depending on the rightsholders’ aims and choices.

It is important to be aware that once your content has been published open access/under a creative commons licence, rights cannot be recalled in the future – the right of others to access and re-use a work is set in perpetuity.

‘Fair dealing’ is a copyright exception that allows anyone to copy limited extracts of a work for the purposes of research or private study, without the permission of the author. Such use must be conducted in a way which does not prejudice the rights of the copyright owner. The work may also be used for criticism, parody, review or for reporting current events, provided that the work is accompanied by an acknowledgement identifying the author and the title of the work. Learn more about exceptions to copyright.

To establish the copyright holder of a recent book or magazine take a look at the ‘copyright page’ (usually the back of the title page in the case of a book) and it will tell you who the copyright holder is, the publisher and to whom ‘all rights are reserved’. Learn more about how to find the copyright holder.

There is an exception to permit the public recitation of a reasonable extract of a copyright work without having to first obtain permission, as long as the author is sufficiently acknowledged. So you can read a poem by another author at a public event.

The reading of a poem, e.g. at a public event, can be recorded either for private and domestic use or for broadcast, with the permission of the performer. However, it should be noted that the definition of broadcast cannot be definitively said to include internet transmission. There is no issue with writers reading their own work at an event and this event being either streamed live on the internet or subsequently posted on a service such as YouTube. The complications arise with translations and performances of works by someone other than the performer.

You need permission to quote from works that are in copyright. For quotations other than those in the limited circumstances described below, you should ask permission to use any ‘substantial’ extract from a copyright work.

The difficulty is that the meaning of ‘substantial’ is not defined in the Copyright Act but is a matter of fact and degree. A short extract may be a vital part of a work and it has often been said that the test is much more about quality than quantity. A few sentences taken from a long novel or biography are unlikely to constitute a ‘substantial part’, but a few lines of poetry may be.

The issue of linking and copyright infringement is complex and has exercised the European Court of Justice on several occasions, most recently in early 2021.

IP Kat blogger and intellectual property expert Eleonora Rosati has published an updated version of a table she created to summarise the laws. Rosati said the table is ‘obviously a simplified summary’ of CJEU decisions on linking, but hoped it would ‘serve to give an introductory and easily understandable picture’ of EU copyright laws on the issue. Download the summary chart.

Displaying content on a website is a form of ‘making available on the internet’. If the content posted on the website is someone else’s copyright then this is a form of ‘re-publishing’ and subject to the same rules as apply to any other sort of re-publishing. Without permission your website will be infringing.

Irish copyright law includes an exception for ‘illustration for teaching’. You can copy small extract of works in any medium that is limited to what is needed to illustrate a particular teaching point can be used by someone providing education via Zoom, PowerPoint, whiteboard, photocopying etc provided they acknowledge the source, do not interfere with the author’s moral rights and do not compromise the rightsholders’ ability to exploit their work financially.

Displaying content on a website is a form of ‘making available on the internet’. If the content posted on the website is someone else’s copyright then this is a form of ‘re-publishing’ and subject to the same rules as apply to any other sort of re-publishing. It cannot be done under an educational exception even if the website-owner is an educational establishment – the rights holders’ permission must be sought. Without this permission your website will be infringing.

While there are copyright exceptions for individuals conducting individual research and for the provision of education, such exceptions do not exist for businesses. Permission to use copyright material can be sought directly from the copyright owner or by obtaining a licence from a collective management organisation, such as ICLA or Newspaper Licensing Ireland (NLI).

Displaying content on a website is a form of ‘making available on the internet’. If the content posted on the website is someone else’s copyright then this is a form of ‘re-publishing’ and subject to the same rules as apply to any other sort of re-publishing. Without permission your website will be infringing.

The issue of linking and copyright infringement is complex and has exercised the European Court of Justice on several occasions, most recently in early 2021.

IP Kat blogger and intellectual property expert Eleonora Rosati has published an updated version of a table she created to summarise the laws. Rosati said the table is ‘obviously a simplified summary’ of CJEU decisions on linking, but hoped it would ‘serve to give an introductory and easily understandable picture’ of EU copyright laws on the issue. Download the summary chart.