Term of Copyright

A Premchand story, a Lata Mangeshkar song and a 1960s film are all old, yet a publisher can reprint the first freely while a YouTube channel may get a notice for the second. Why? Copyright does not last forever, and the clock runs differently for different kinds of work. The question for this topic is simple: for how long, and counted from when?

In two minutes

Copyright in a published literary, dramatic, musical or artistic work lasts until sixty years from the start of the calendar year after the author’s death; for films, sound recordings, anonymous, posthumous, government and similar works the sixty years run from the start of the year after publication.

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.