Protecting Ideas and Titles: Copyright Laws for Music

Once you have established a band that has produced a body of music, you will likely want to protect your intellectual property to prevent other musicians from copying or otherwise misusing your work. Intellectual property, also referred to as IP, is the legal term used to describe any piece of work, type of invention or specific expression that you have created.

 

For example, a poem or a song is just as much a piece of intellectual property as a band name or album cover artwork. Because making it in the music industry relies on building your name in a unique, yet identifiable way, securing copyrights to your band's intellectual property is key to protecting your work as you start to share it with fans around the world.

 

A number of countries have set up copyright laws to protect specific titles, ideas and other sorts of intellectual property. In other words, copyright laws for music can be dramatically different from country to country. As a result, understanding the copyright laws of your given country is key to being able to effectively guard your intellectual property.

 

In this section, we will take a glance at the copyright laws of the United States and other countries. Our articles will outline how to get copyrights, what copyrights protect and how long they last in various countries so that you and your band understand how to protect your name and music around the world.

In the United States, copyrights are automatically given to those who have created new works or inventions. This means that, if you are a band member who has just written a new song, you don't have to go to any government agency to secure a copyright for the material you created.

 

However, while copyrights are automatic in the United States, you may have to prove that you were indeed the first to invent or come up with a particular work, should you face a legal challenge to your copyright. To legitimately do this, lawyers and other experts suggest that people register their intellectual property. Although registering intellectual property used to mean that you had to go to a specific agency, modern technology allows you to register your creative work online in a matter of minutes.

 

Once you have registered your intellectual property, you will have legitimate proof of its date of creation, which will hold up in court, should you ever face a challenge to your copyright over it.

 

Keep in mind, however, that copyrights don't protect your intellectual property forever. Be sure you understand the duration of U.S. music copyright laws as well so that you can retain ownership of the copyrights for materials you created.

Because individual countries have developed their own copyright laws, no international copyright law exists. However, since the late 19th century, a series of international conventions has worked to standardize copyright laws in participating countries. These conventions, dubbed the Berne Conventions, have been held about every 10 to 15 years since 1893.

 

Through the work done at these recurring conventions, all participating countries have agreed that copyrights are automatically granted to an author, inventor, musician, etc. once he has created a new, finished work. Similarly, all copyrights are honored in the same manner in each of the participating countries.

 

Because not all countries participate in or uphold the work of the Berne Conventions, be sure that you understand exactly which countries adhere to it so that you don't get tripped up by differences in copyright laws on an international level.

 

 

ProtectRite® (n.d.). Welcome to ProtectRight®. Retrieved December 31, 2007 from the ProtectRight® Web site.