Copyright protection lasts for the life of the author/ holder plus an additional 70 years.
Marriage is for life and does end at death but copyright outlives the holder. It goes for extra 50-70 years after the death of the copyright holder. This means it is for the whole of the lifetime of the copyright holder plus extra 70 years after he/she has died.
Copyright protects an expression and not an idea, conception, or imagination. It must have been expressed or manifested by the creative before it gains the protection of copyright law.
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The requirement used in determining if a thing or an expression is copyrightable is called “Modicum of creativity”.
The “modicum of creativity” requirement sets a low bar for copyright-ability and this standard of requirement was established in the case Feist Publications, Inc., v. Rural Telephone Service Co., (499 U.S. 340)
In the above case of Feist Publications, Inc., v. Rural Telephone Service Co., (499 U.S. 340), the Supreme Court of the United States held that “the requisite level of creativity is extremely low; even a slight amount will suffice, this means that anything is copyrightable in as much as it has been expressed and has an ounce of creativity expressed in it.
The copyright act of 2004 is the extant law governing copyright and other related matters in Nigeria.
The Nigerian copyright law (Cap 28, Laws of the Federation of Nigeria) permits the holder of copyrighted works to reproduce the work in any material form, publish and republish the work, perform the work in public, produce and reproduce any translation of the work, make any adaptation of the work and this right can be transferred or given to another person.
When another person reproduces or performs a copyrighted work without the authorization or consent of the original author of the work, that person will be said to have infringed on the copyright of another and will be made to pay damages.
Summary of the United case of Feist Publications, Inc., v. Rural Telephone Service Co., (499 U.S. 340) which established the modicum of creativity test that shows if an expression is copyrightable or not;
In that case, the defendant had copied information from the plaintiff’s telephone listing to include it in its own. The plaintiff, therefore, sued them for copyright infringement to have copied their listings. The Court held that information contained in the plaintiff’s phone directory was not copyrightable as there was no ounce of expression of creativity in it and that therefore the act of the defendant copying the telephone listing has not infringed on anyone’s copyright.
This decision established that information alone without a minimum of original creativity cannot be protected by copyright.