Copyright is the protection of intellectual property; this protection can only ever extend to work done, and never simply an idea. More than one person can have the same idea - saying that you could copyright an idea would be to suggest that you could copyright an entire genre, which is impractical/unfair. The work must also be original and substantial to receive this protection.
It is the work produced which is valuable, and is therefore to the detriment of its originator if someone else benefits from their labour. Work can be in the form of manual labour (painting a picture, making a model) or intellectual work.
Because the work has value, the copyright to it can be sold. When this happens the original owner no longer has any legal right to use that piece of work any more, as this right belongs to the buyer.
The law sees no distinction between work done by hand or work done using education.
Under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 copyright protects any literary, dramatic, artistic or musical work, sound recording, film, broadcast, or typographical arrangement. This copyright doesn't have to be formally registered but it is a good idea to assert copyright in a piece to dissuade anyone from assuming it is free to use.
Copyright lasts for 70 years from the end of the authors death.
Copyright in a broadcast is retained for 50 years.
In 2008, the Government said it was considering extending the copyright of sound recordings from 50 to 70 years as well.
Copyright in news stories
In 2007, Dan Brown was sued unsuccessfully for breach of copyright by Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh, who wrote The Holy Blood and The Holy Grail. They lost because the judge upheld that copyright can only extend to the arrangement of facts and ideas and they way in which they are expressed - the idea itself (in this case that of Templar knights and Jesus' descendants etc.) - doesn't have any protection at all.
Copyright in maps and drawings
You can't publish any of an artistic work such as a map or drawing without permission from the creator.
In 2001, Centrica (associated with the Automobile Association) paid £20 million in an out of court settlement to Ordnance Survey for the use of OS maps as a base for their own maps without asking.
Ordnance Survey had introduced subtle errors into its maps to catch out potential plagiarists (like a watermark in a digital image)
Copyright in speeches
Under the 1988 Act, there is copyright in spoken words, even if they are not delivered from a script, as soon as they are recorded.
The speaker owns the literary copyright to their own words, unless they are speaking in the course of their employment. Copyright in a speaker's words is not infringed when reporting parlimentary or court proceedings.
Ownership of copyright
An employer will own the copyright to anything produced while you're under their employment (a newspaper could use an article for anything they liked, any work that an individual produces for a uni course will be attributed to the uni, etc) The newspaper has no right, however, to copyright of work done by non-members of the staff, even if the work has been specifically ordered from the contributor.
Defences against copyright infringement
'Fair dealing' in newspapers
There is no copyright in a news story, but persistent lifting of facts from another paper may be an infringement of copyright law because of the skill, labour, and judgement that went into the research in the stories.
Fair dealing is a defence that will sometimes allow some quoting from another paper on a current news story.
If a substantial piece of work is taken then there must be sufficient acknowledge to its source.
Photographs are exempt from the defence of fair dealing, under Section 30 of the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988. If a newspaper steals exclusive photographs from another, then they are very much open to a claim for infringement.
Public interest
The 1988 Act states that nothing in the Act affects 'any rule of law preventing or restricting the enforcement of copyright on the grounds of public interest or otherwise' but this defence appears to be very shaky and there are not many examples where it has succeeded.
In the Hyde Park Residence case, the Court of Appeal said that the Sun's actions could not be defended as in the public interest and that the Copyright Act 1988 does not give a court general power to enable an infringer to use another's copyright in the public interest.
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