Rights and Their Limitations

• Author: Robert A. Gorman
• Profession: University of Virginia School of Law
• Pages: 69

Perhaps the most significant provisions of the Copyright Act are to bfound in section 106, which sets forth the exclusive rights of the copyright owner.

Anyone who violates any of those rights is (by virtue of section 501)

"an infringer of the copyright." Section 106 gives the owner of copyrighthe exclusive rights to do and to authorize any of the following:

(1) to reproduce the copyrighted work in copies or phonorecords

(2) to prepare derivative works based upon the copyrighted work

(3) to distribute copies or phonorecords of the copyrighted worto the public by sale or other transfer of ownership, or brental, lease, or lending

(4) in the case of literary, musical, dramatic, and choreographiworks, pantomimes, and motion pictures and other audiovisual works, to perform the copyrighted work publicly; an

(5) in the case of literary, musical, dramatic, and choreographiworks, pantomimes, and pictorial, graphic, or sculpturaworks, including the individual images of a motion picture oother audiovisual work, to display the copyrighted work publicly.

It should be noted that the copyright owner has the exclusive right noonly to do the listed acts but also to authorize others to do them. Thus, iA owns the copyright in a novel, which is published by B, and B (withouA's consent) authorizes producer C to make a motion picture based upothe novel, when C's film is later released A can bring infringement actions against both B and C. Note also that although a work to be eligiblfor copyright protection must be fixed in tangible form, unauthorizeconduct can infringe even though it does not involve a fixing of the worS by the...