Protecting Business Innovations Via Copyright Intellectual property rights (IPR) has a great impact on innovation development and society. In Science, Engineering, and Business, we seek to create wealth through innovation in products, designs, manufacturing processes, and business systems or models. However, innovation leaders often FAIL to benefit from their discoveries and inventions when they are unable to adequately protect those innovations. This course provides learners with an understanding of Copyright law and how it can be used to protect business innovation. The course focus is on protecting innovations with copyright as one of several tools that can be used by companies and individuals to protect creative innovations. In additional to learning about how copyright works in theory, we will also discuss situations in which copyright might not be effective in protecting innovations, and will focus on the legal issues involved from a practical business perspective rather than from a purely legal viewpoint. This course is one part of a four course series focusing on protection of business innovations using copyright, patent, trademark and strategy, and these four courses may be taken in any order that is most beneficial to students interested in learning about protecting innovation. Watch Course Overview: https://youtu.be/81adg1ZnbS4
3.2 What is derivative work?
Loading...
From the course by The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
Protecting Business Innovations via Copyright
22 ratings
The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
22 ratings
From the lesson
Derivative Work & Parody
This will explore other rights within Copyright Law. I will introduce derivative works and parody with lots of interesting examples like the Beach Boys, Weird Al and Annoying Orange. We encourage you to interact with the examples by going to YouTube or other suggested sites to view them as you go through the lecture videos.
Meet the Instructors
Theodore Henry King CLARKAssociate Professor
Information Systems, Business Statistics and Operations Management Department
In this first session of week 3 we're going to look at
what is a derivative work?
We're going to define it and look at some examples of derivative works.
A derivative work is when we put it into this context it could be any of these.
So derivative work covers the spectrum of, could be prohibited.
What's an example of that?
I write a book, you approach me, you want to make a movie.
A derivative work, a movie of a book is a derivative work.
And I say no.
You can't do it.
That's a derivative work and
you can't make a movie based on my book without my permission.
So I could say I want a lot of money and you say it's not worth that much and
so it's prohibited.
Or, it might be permitted.
I say, yeah, I'll take that cash.
That's a good deal.
Sometimes you may say, no you can't make a movie on my book,
about my book, and you say well I'm going to do it anyway.
It's possible that it might be permitted under fair use.
Let's say it's a particularly newsworthy thing and
you're making a news report about a book which reveals very
sensitive public information about corruption or bribery.
You don't give me permission, but the court says that looks like fair use.
That looks like a first amendment right, that looks reasonable.
Or maybe I make a parody and I tell something funny.
Well that might be allowed as well as a fair use defense.
So maybe it's not exactly your book maybe it's a parody of your book, or
my magazine is a parody of your magazine, or something else that's copyrighted.
And finally, if the court does not give you a fair use exemption, or
some other exemption from copyright and you do it without permission It's illegal.
And so if your derivative works may be prohibited and not done,
that's where copyright protection works.
Or permitted and done or fair use as a defence,
so done, but not permitted but legal or
done not permitted and illegal.
So what is a derivative work?
Now that does come back to the question of let's define it.
Essentially it's pretty broad.
And it says it's the right to exclude everyone
from creating a work based on an original copyright work.
Just broadly define any work
which is based on my original work is a derivative work of my work.
So let's look at what's protected under derivative work?
What are some examples?
A derivative work would protect an author from having
a movie made without their permission.
Remember we talked about It's a Wonderful Life, well the studio's got permission
from an author of a book that's not exactly the same story but
it's kind of related and the movie was kind of based on the story.
So they got permission.
They said, we'd like to make a movie which is related
to the story you told in your book.
So they paid money, and they bought the rights to make this movie.
You also can protect against a secondary work made without consent.
I want to tell the story of what happened before the first Star Wars or
something which happened to the cousin of the emperor or
some other stories in the Star Wars universe.
Or I want to tell the story of Harry Potter's cousin.
These are secondary works.
They're related to the original work.
They're not based exactly on the original work but they're related to this story,
theme, or story arc of the original work.
And you can't do that.
You can't create a secondary work without consent or,
if you do that, It better be parody, or better be newsworthy, or
have some other defense, because you got a good chance of being sued.
So copyright will protect against these secondary works.
You might be able to fight your case and
get a fair use defense, but you might lose.
Now here's an example of a fair use defense that was fought out in court.
Mirage Editions versus Albuquerque Art.
Mirage Editions published a book of paintings, or pictures.
And this book of art,was beautiful art by a famous artist
and, Albuquerque Arts said, you know what?
I really like this guy's art.
What I'm going to do is buy this book and cut out the pictures.
I've gotta first sale defense for that.
You cut up a book.
If you buy a book you can write in it, you can cut it up,
you can do whatever you want with it.
So I'm going to cut out these pictures and
then I'm going to sell the pictures one at a time.
Well that's okay, you can do that.
You can cut up a book and sell each chapter individually.
You can't copy it, you can't put it online, but
you could sell the physical chapters of the book.
And not clear you'd find anybody who would buy it, but maybe you would.
In this case the pictures are really pretty and
they say we're going to sell these pictures.
Now, if you were to frame them,
you can sell them as framed beautiful pictures of art.
And you can get a nice price for
it by framing them you haven't transformed the pictures.
It's still based on the original pictures published in a book that you cut out.
And that's allowed under the first sale right.
But they did something more.
Instead of just selling the pictures they glued the pictures onto a ceramic tile,
and then they put a glazing over the tile
that was an artistic style of glazing that made the pictures look old.
Made them look antique.
So it was a special kind of treatment that altered the look of the pictures.
By doing that, the court said no.
And they ruled on this.
The question going to the court, is this a violation of copyright?
The defense was first sale defense.
And the court says first sale defense does not apply in this case.
Well, why?
You bought the book.
You cut it up. You're selling the pictures.
But you're not.
What the court said is you're selling a derivative work based on the pictures.
You're not selling the pictures.
You're selling something based on those pictures which transforms the appearance
of the pictures makes them something new and creates a derivative work.
In another court case in similar situation a company cut up a book,
took out the pictures, did some framing of the put them on tiles and sold them.
But, the glazing or covering didn't change the picture image.
It wasn't significant modification, and in that case,
the courts said putting a picture in a picture frame or even putting it
on a tile is not a big deal unless you are altering the appearance of the picture.
Then you are creating a derivative work.
And so we can see this is a tough case because two cases very similar,
the rulings are different.
Well that's the nature of first sale defense, you can't always rely on it.
And derivative works, how far do you have to modify something even a glazing
could create a new work in the opinion of a judge.
So the court ruling comes back to this idea in law of the right
to prevent derivative works remains with the original copyright holder.
If you're transforming a work or you're creating a derivative work in any way
you no longer have the first sale defense because it's not the same thing.
You're creating something new.
So now, come back to what is a derivative work.
A derivative work could be a permitted work.
It could be a prohibitive work.
It could be something which is excused under fair use, or it could be illegal.
In all of these cases,
the derivative work is something based on an original which is different.
It must be different to be a derivative, but
it must be based on something which is copyright protected to be derivative.
So something which is new but
which is derived from or based on an original copyright work.
That's derivative work and it can be all four types of illegal,
fair use, permitted, or prohibited under copyright.
Thank you.
[MUSIC]
Explore our Catalog
Join for free and get personalized recommendations, updates and offers.
Coursera provides universal access to the world’s best education,
partnering with top universities and organizations to offer courses online.
© 2018 Coursera Inc. All rights reserved.
