Copyrights: Economic and Moral Rights

A painter sells her best canvas to a hotel. Years later the hotel cuts the painting in half to fit a lobby wall. She has already been paid and the canvas is no longer hers, yet most people feel she should be able to object. The Copyright Act agrees with that instinct. It gives the author two kinds of protection: economic rights, which can be sold, and moral rights, which stay with the author even after everything else has been sold.

In two minutes

Economic rights (s.14) let the owner control and profit from copying, distribution, performance, communication, adaptation and translation and can be assigned or licensed; moral rights (s.57) let the author claim authorship and object to prejudicial distortion even after assignment.

The rest of this chapter

The full explanation, the cheat sheet, every previous-year question at every mark weight, the quiz and the answer skeletons are part of Intellectual Property Laws on LexBlox Semester. Sign in to unlock the subject, or read Module 1 of Legal Language and Writing free.