Gastão Cunha Ferreira helps to define strategies to protect your creative works, complemented with industrial property rights such as trademarks, patents and designs, be it through contractual means or through the use of creative work registrations.
Copyright protects intellectual creations, literary and artistic works, such as musical compositions, books, thesis, paintings, graphical design, websites, slogans, photography among many others, as well as technological creations such as software and databases.
The author has the exclusive right to use the work created. This protection exists from the moment in which the work is exteriorized and is extinguished 70 years after the death of its intellectual creator.
The protection is not dependent on any registration. However, its registration is advisable as a means for establishing a priority date to the creation of the work (in other words, to know "who is copying whom").
On the other hand, Neighbouring Rights protect the benefits of the artists as interpreters or performers. The artists can be singers, musicians, dancers, actors. They also protect the benefits of the phonogram producers (CD's, vinils, cassettes) and videograms (audiovisuals) and the benefits of the broadcasting organizations.
The artists benefit from the right of controling and preventing the use of its interpretations or plays (e.g.: authorize the filming of a choreography or to retransmit the play in a network cable TV). The protection is extinguished 50 years after the interpretation or play or first broadcast.
A single work may involve protection by Copyright and by Neighbouring Rights, that may belong to same intellectual creator. For instances, if the singer of a certain song has also been the composer and author of the lyrics.
| Copyright | Neighbouring Rights | |
|---|---|---|
| Type of innovation that it protects | Artistic and intellectual creations, including technological creations | Performances of the artists or performers, of the producers of phonograms and videograms and of the broadcasting organizations |
| Cares to have | Originality; Registration as proof of creation | Inscription in a collective management organization |
| Competitive advantages | Exclusive rights; Market competitivity | The ability to control and prevent third party exhibitions, plays or performances |
| Duration | 70 years after the death of the author | 50 years after the performance or first broadcast |