Intellectual Property Research: International Copyright Research

Copyrights

Patents

Trademarks

Trade Secrets

Career Resources

International copyright blog provided by the publisher Wolters Kluwer.

An international copyright blog with a name based on the year the Statute of Anne was created.

Copyright is similar to other areas of intellectual property in that there is a movement afoot to make protection of creative works more uniform.  However, while such an effort has tended toward the organization and disclosure of information in trademark and patent, the same is not the case for coyright.  The blanket grant of copyright without deposit and registration requirements has tended against, rather than for, the creation of databases of copyrighted material.  Those that do exist pale in comparison to those used by patent and trademark practitioners.  International copyright researchers have to be more creative in the use of online sources to find copyright information.

Below are some of the leading copyright agreements governing the protection of creative property today.

Many countries do not provide a great deal of copyright information, other than the basics of copyright protection, or translate what information they do have into English.  A copyright office will often be separate from the one handling trademark and patent.   A full list can be found at WIPO's Directory of Intellectual Property Offices.