Copyrights

Copyright enforcement for the protection of intellectual works

We work with our clients in defining an integrated protection strategy for their copyrights and to assist them at all stages, from the analysis aimed at identifying the copyright to be protected and the types of protection to be activated, from the description of the work to be protected, to the drafting of the documentation required for filing, to the judicial, extrajudicial, civil, and criminal defence of copyrights, to the asset and financial valorisation, and finally to the setting of the strategy for the enhancement, development and economic exploitation of exclusive rights.

We provide advice on protecting copyrights in all areas of creativity and ingenuity including in the digital, on the web, and on social networks.

Copyright Services

© Filing Unpublished and Published Works

We assist our clients in filing at the SIAE and the Italian Ministry of Culture or foreign competent Authorities, all unpublished and published works of authorship, in Italy and worldwide.

© Drafting Opinions and Contracts

We provide opinions and take care of the drafting of all types of contracts related to copyright, in collaboration with trusted outside attorneys.

© Enforcement

Administrative, extrajudicial, and judicial enforcement of our clients copyrights.

To know more about Copyright

Definition

The Italian Copyright Law protects all intellectual works of a creative nature in the fields of literature, music, visual arts, architecture, theatre and film, including, but not limited to:

Literary, dramatic, scientific, educational, religious works, both written and oral.
Musical works and compositions, with or without words, dramatic musical works and musical variations constituting original works in themselves.
Choreographic and pantomime works, from which the outline is set in writing or otherwise.
Works of sculpture, painting, drawing, engraving and similar figurative arts, including set design.
The drawings and works of architecture.
Audio-visual and cinematographic works.
Photographic works endowed with creative character, but not simple photographs.
Software (source code or other embodiments), provided that they are original as a result of the author’s intellectual creation.
Databases, understood as collections of works, data or other independent elements systematically or methodically arranged and individually accessible by electronic means or otherwise;
Works of industrial design that have creative character and inherent artistic value.

These include individual and collective works. Copyright originates from the creation as a particular expression of intellectual work by its author and does not require any registration. Copyright, therefore, protects only the expressive form of a creation and not the ideas contained in the work.

Filing procedure

All of the aforementioned works may be filed for recordal purposes with the SIAE (the Italian Society of Authors and Publishers, commonly known by its acronym SIAE, is the Italian copyright collecting agency) or with the Ministry of Culture in the Public Register of Protected Works, and their filing does not have constitutive effect of the right but represents, in benefit of the depositor or otherwise of those entitled, a certain proof of the existence of the work itself, as of the date of filing.

Acceptance of the filing does not entail any evaluation or recognition of the work’s protectability requirements under the Copyright Law. The SIAE or the Ministry, merely keeps the filed works in its archives, placed in sealed envelopes, and issues a certificate showing the recordal number assigned to the file.

Rights of the author

The law recognizes to the author of the creative work a series of rights, both of a patrimonial nature, relating to the economic use of the created work, and of a moral nature relating to the author’s personality. As regards the economic rights, the author has the exclusive right to publish the work and use it economically in any way or form, in addition to the right to authorize third parties to:

the right to translate the work;
the right to make adaptations and arrangements of the work;
the right to perform in public dramatic, dramatic-musical and musical works;
the right to recite literary works in public;
the right to communicate to the public the performance of such works;
the right to broadcast (or to a mere equitable remuneration instead of a right of authorization);
the right to make reproductions in any manner or form (or to a mere equitable remuneration instead of a right of authorization);
the right to use the work as a basis for an audio-visual work, and the right to reproduce, distribute, perform in public or communicate to the public that audio-visual work.

These economic rights may be assigned in whole or in part by the author to third parties. The duration of the economic rights cover the author’s lifetime and until the end of the 70th calendar year after his/her death. As regards the moral rights, the author, even after the assignment of the economic rights, retains the right to claim authorship of the work and to object to any deformation, mutilation, or other modification, to any act that may be detrimental to his honour or reputation. Moral rights may not be assigned by the author to third parties. After the author’s death, such rights may be asserted, without limitation, by his/her spouse and children, and, in their absence, by his/her parents and other ascendants and direct descendants, or in their absence, by his/her siblings and their descendants.

Neighbouring rights

Neighbouring or related rights are exclusive rights related to copyright that are not based on the act of intellectual creation, but rather on an act of industrial activity (e.g. phonogram producer) or professional activity (e.g. performers) and are protected consistent with the right that belongs to the author. The neighbouring rights are the rights of performers, of the phonogram producers, the rights of producers of cinematographic or audio-visual works or sequences of moving images, audio-visual sports rights, rights relating to radio and television broadcasting, rights relating to sketches of theatrical scenes, rights relating to photographs, rights relating to correspondence in letters and portraits, and rights relating to projects of works of engineering. The average duration of rights is about 50 years, but there are specific and different durations for each type of right.

Filing unpublished and published works

We assist our clients in recording all unpublished works at the SIAE (the Italian Society of Authors and Publishers), in the OLAF Register, or at the Italian Ministry of Culture, in the General Public Register of Protected Works (R.P.G.).

The recordal lasts for five years and can be renewed for an additional period of equal duration, if the work has not been published during the first five-year period.

We train and follow our clients in the activation and maintenance of a proper procedure of documentation preservation so that, if necessary, we can prove the certain date of creation and authorship of the protected work, based on organizational criteria in accordance with business needs.

We take care of the filing, even abroad, of protected works, according to the different requirements, methods, and deadlines required by the various relevant institutions and offices.

Online watching

We activate online watching services, in collaboration with digital service providers who use special proprietary technologies aimed at tracking and monitoring the presence/use of protected works on the internet and on social networks.

Contracts and enforcement

We provide opinions and take care of the drafting of all types of contracts related to copyright, in collaboration with trusted outside attorneys.
We support our clients in the administrative, civil, criminal, extrajudicial, and judicial enforcement of their copyrights, also in cooperation with trusted outside attorneys experienced in the field.