UNIVERSAL COPYRIGHT

While international co-operation on trademarks and patents is increasing, there are worrying signs that for copyright, universality is reducing in importance, says Rahul Chaudhry.

Te legal theory of rights states that a right is a legal benefit granted to a subject by the sovereign authority by means of its statutory or declaratory process. Tis implies that a legal right is necessarily restricted to the sphere of influence of the sovereign authority and is also limited to the extent granted by the sovereign. Tese rights are oſten referred to as statutory rights. At the other end of the spectrum are natural rights: those that are inherent in man and universal in nature. Tese rights are not granted by any sovereign authority and have been referred to as the ‘inalienable’ rights of man. While natural rights are not granted or contingent upon, in theory, any legislative process, their enforcement is a different matter.

Intellectual property rights, particularly copyright, are deemed to be rights arising from the fruits of a man’s intellectual labour. Copyright is the right of an author to prevent unauthorised use of his words or displacement of the credit due to him for his labour. In this sense, copyright appears to be an inalienable right of an author but is in fact a product of law and granted only to the extent allowed by legislation. Tis necessarily means that the protection or enforcement of intellectual property rights is limited to the extent granted and allowed by the laws of a particular territory, and falls within the ambit of legal rights.

However, it has always been felt that copyrighted works require protection in other jurisdictions as

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World Intellectual Property Review May/June 2010

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