The Performing Right Society (PRS)
COPYRIGHT, DESIGNS AND PATENTS ACT (1988)
The 1988
Copyright, Designs & Patents Act ("the 1988 Act") describes copyright as a
property right existing in nine categories of protected works: original
literary, dramatic, musical and artistic works; sound recordings, films,
broadcasts and cable programmes; and the typographical arrangement of published
editions.
Once an original work is recorded in writing or in some other form, copyright
arises automatically. There is no need to register a copyright work formally.
Generally copyright lasts for the life of the author, plus seventy years after
his death.
Generally the "author" of a work (described in The 1988 Act as the "person who
creates it") is the first owner of any copyright in the work. However,
authorship is not synonymous with ownership. Because copyright is a form of
property, the author can transfer it in whole or in part to another person such
as, for example, PRS.
THE RIGHTS OF A COPYRIGHT OWNER
The 1988 Act gives a copyright owner the exclusive right to do and authorise the
doing of the following acts (known as "restricted acts") in the United Kingdom.
These are:-
To copy the work.
To issue copies of the work to the public.
To perform, show or play the work in public.
To broadcast the work or include it in a cable programme service.
To make an adaptation of the work or to do any of the above in relation to an
adaptation.
Subject to certain statutory exceptions, the right to do any of the above acts
is exclusive to the copyright owner to the extent that no-one without his
permission can do or authorise the doing of those acts in relation to the
protected work.
HOW PRS FITS INTO THE COPYRIGHT SYSTEM
As has already been mentioned, the restricted acts comprised in the concept of
copyright attach to the copyright owner rather than the author. In order to
enable the copyright owner to exploit his rights, the 1988 Act allows him to
assign, ie transfer them to another. Moreover, that assignment may be limited so
as to apply to one or more of the restricted acts, and, indeed this is the case
when PRS takes an assignment of rights from its members, who assign to the
Society the rights to:
Perform in public
To broadcast and
To include in a cable programme service their musical works.
These rights are collectively referred to as the "performing right".
The effect of that assignment is to make PRS the owner of the performing right
in its member works (irrespective of whether those works were created before or
after the assignment).
Since it owns the performing right, PRS can license others to do any or all of
the restricted acts comprised in that right, which it duly does in return for a
royalty fee. PRS subsequently distributes this royalty fee to its members in
accordance with its internal rules and regulations.
The general rule is that to do or authorise the doing of any of the restricted
acts without the consent of the copyright owner is a primary infringement of
copyright.
In addition, any person who effectively facilitates or compounds the effects of
primary infringement may be liable for secondary infringement of copyright under
the 1988 Act. However, to be liable for the secondary infringement of copyright,
the person must generally either know, or have reason to believe, that copyright
would be or had been infringed.
A copyright owner is entitled to bring civil proceedings for infringement and to
obtain relief in the same way as if any other property right had been infringed.
For example, he is allowed damages or he may obtain an injunction to prevent the
continuance of an infringement.
The moral rights code, which was introduced in the 1988 Act, moves away from the
economic base of copyright and deals with more abstract concepts, such as the
reputation of an author and the integrity of his work. As such, moral rights are
vested inalienably in the author of the work during his lifetime, and not in the
copyright owner.
Four types of moral right are outlined in the 1988 Act. These are:-
the right to be identified as author of the work.
the right to object to derogatory treatment of one's work.
the right not to have a work falsely attributed to oneself and the right to
privacy of certain
photographs and films.
However, authors should note that the rights are heavily qualified in the
legislation.
NO FORMAL REGISTRATION REQUIRED TO PROTECT COPYRIGHT
Songwriters should remember that under UK law both musical works and literary
works are automatically protected from the time that they are committed to some
material form - that is, written down or recorded in any way; no official
registration is necessary to secure copyright in the work. Notification of a
title, as is required from PRS members for the Society's works registration
purposes, does not create copyright in the notified work or works.
A consequence of the above is that, in the event of a dispute over authorship,
ownership or originality, there is no standard way of proving that one work was
in existence before another. There are, however, several ways in which it is
possible to prove that a work had been produced by a given date, namely:-
Deposit a copy with a solicitor or bank manager and obtain a dated receipt;
charges would doubtless be made for this service; or
Send a copy of the work to yourself by registered post, leaving the envelope
unopened upon receipt; or Register the work at Stationers' Hall where a
Copyright Register has been kept for many years.
The fee for the registration of a work or a group of works was £30.00 plus VAT
in October 1994. This fee provides registration for seven years; thereafter
re-registration for another seven years can be obtained by payment of a further
fee.