ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to analyse the world’s two systems of intellectual property law, their differences and similarities, and how in the course of media history they have merged to share each other’s benefits. The common law system in the UK and USA is generally known as copyright because, as a doctrine, it has emphasized the rights inherent in anyone having control of the copy of publication. The main body of current UK copyright law is to be found in the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 and subsequent amendments through statutory instruments applying European Union law, such as SI 96/2967 which extended the duration of literary, dramatic, and artistic copyright to 70 years after the death of an author. Similarly, US copyright law is set out in the Copyright Act 1976, followed by further legislation such as the Berne Convention Implementation Act 1988, and Copyright Term Extension and Digital Millennium Copyright Acts of 1998. The civil law system, exemplified for the purposes of this chapter in the law of France and Germany, has emphasized authors’ rights with a focus on the creation and artistic presence in the original publication and how those rights are recognized in distribution and duplication. The social philosophy underpinning authors’ rights is that, as literary and artistic creation are socially beneficial, everything should be done to ensure that the copying of an author’s work could provide the means to subsistence and production of more creativity.
