COPYRIGHT IN CYPRUS
of the author and not a copy of an existing photograph;
• Works of architecture in the form of buildings or models; and
• Works of artistic craſtsmanship not falling within any of the preceding paragraphs.
According to the Cyprus Copyright Law an object which is not original is excluded from protection. No copyright shall subsist in a literary, musical or artistic work unless it is of an original character, and has been reduced to writing, recorded or otherwise reduced to some material form.
Protection against infringement
Te Intellectual Property Law provides remedies for copyright infringement.
For the criminal offences listed in the law, penalties include a fine not exceeding 30,000 CYP (the law quotes this figure in CYP, equivalent to € 50,872) or imprisonment for up to three years.
Te court may order the offender to destroy any copies of the work in his possession or to deliver them to the copyright owner.
Civil Remedies include damages, destruction or delivery of infringing copies and the equipment by which copies are produced, an account of profits and an injunction.
Te following article of the directive should be noted in respect of the harmonisation and the infringements remedies:
“1. Member States shall provide appropriate sanctions and remedies in respect of infringements of the rights and obligations set out in this Directive and shall take all the measures necessary to ensure that those sanctions and remedies are applied. Te sanctions thus provided for shall be effective, proportionate and dissuasive.
2. Each Member State shall take the measures necessary to ensure that rightholders whose interests are affected by an infringing activity carried out on its territory can bring an action for damages and/or apply for an injunction and, where appropriate, for the seizure of infringing material as well as of devices, products or components referred to in Article 6(2).
3. Member States shall ensure that rightholders are in a position to apply for an injunction against intermediaries whose services are used by a third party to infringe a copyright or related right.”
www.worldipreview.com Duration of registration & protection
Copyright exists in: scientific works, literary works including computer soſtware, musical works, artistic works including photographs and an original database for a period of 70 years, commencing from the death of the author.
Te Berne Convention provided for copyright protection for a single term based on the life of the author, and did not require registration or the inclusion of a copyright notice for copyright to exist. Under the convention, copyrights for creative works are automatically in force upon their creation without being asserted or declared. An author need not “register” or “apply” for a copyright in countries adhering to the convention. Foreign authors are given the same rights and privileges to copyrighted material as domestic authors in any country that signed the convention.
Te Berne Convention requires its signatories to recognise the copyright of works of authors from other signatory countries in the same way it recognises the copyright of its own nationals.
For photography, the Berne Convention sets
a minimum term of 25 years from the year the photograph was created. Countries under the older versions of the treaty may choose to provide their own protection terms, and certain types of works may be provided shorter terms.
Te Berne Convention Art.9 explicitly states that:
• Authors of literary and artistic works protected by this Convention shall have the exclusive right to authorise the reproduction of these works, in any manner of form.
It shall be a matter of legislation in the countries of the union to permit the reproduction of such works in certain special cases, provided that such
Ermioni Pavlidou obtained an LLB from the University of Central Lancashire, UK, and an LLM in criminal litigation law from City University in London. She is a member of the Cyprus Bar Association. Pavlidou specialises in IP and represents mainly domestic and international clients in obtaining, maintaining and enforcing IP rights in Cyprus and abroad.
Trademarks Brands and the Internet Volume 2, Issue 1 29
"AN OBJECT WHICH IS NOT ORIGINAL IS EXCLUDED FROM PROTECTION."
reproduction does not conflict with a normal exploitation of the work and does not unreasonably prejudice the legitimate interests of the author.
• Any sound or visual recording shall be considered as a reproduction purposes of this convention.
According to copyright laws, then:
Taking pictures of buildings is a reproduction, which must theoretically be authorised by the architect if the right to reproduction is not in the national copyright law.
Te article above allows reproducing and publishing photographs taken in public places.
It is understood that this includes the pictures in a commercial way.
Te Universal Copyright Convention (UCC) ensured that
international protection countries also was
available to authors even in countries that would not become parties to the Berne Convention. Berne convention
became
signatories of the UCC to ensure that the work of citizens in Berne Convention countries would be protected in non-Berne Convention countries. Te Universal Copyright Convention is of limited importance today, as most countries are now part of the union of the Berne Convention.
Ermioni Pavlidou is head of Michael Kyprianou & Co. LLC’s IP department. She can be contacted at:
ermioni@kyprianou.com.cy
for the
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