ABSTRACT
Acts in relation to a copyright work which do not fall within the ambit of the exclusive rights fall into the public domain. Moreover, even acts which prima facie do fall into the sphere of copyright protection may be ‘excused’ by the statute. These are known as the ‘permitted acts’, and represent a detailed attempt to reconcile the conflict between the private, personal interests and rights of copyright authors in their creations and the public interest in access to those works. They are best presented as defences to copyright infringement: s 28(1) of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 (CDPA 1988). Infringement is, therefore, confined to doing primary acts of infringement, by doing restricted acts (those within the exclusive rights) and acts of secondary infringement, which may be broadly described as dealings with infringing copies of a work.
