Copyrights Infringement Case Study Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 5000 words

Copyrights Infringement - Case Study Example There is a constant struggle between old economy based laws of copyrights and the new knowledge economy paradigms challenging legal, moral and ethical issues. Aggressive internet entities as Google providing client services which go beyond the normal course of business have raised a number of issues on copyright and trademarks. In the present case of a suit of likely copyright infringement being faced by Wanda, the client's hosts have reportedly displayed extracts of texts and images of books by US publishers. The US publishers are likely to sue Wanda for copyright infringement. Wanda is unable to terminate the arrangements with its clients or remove the items on the web sites on its own due to contractual obligations. The issues to be analyzed are as follows:- UK copyright law is based on the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, which is the main legislation which governs intellectual property rights in United Kingdom.2 It essentially covers creators of literary works, in this case and rights to its dissemination including copying and issuing to the public. The authors have a right for being identified as the creators of the work. These are supported by international conventions. The Regulations cover all types of works appearing in a variety of media. A work has to be original and based on some skills and labour employed for the same. It does not however apply to an idea which can be replicated in a different form. The owner of the work is the individual who created it. Rights of a copy of a work cannot be claimed. The period of copyright is said to extend upto 70 years till the last remaining author of the work has passed away. It is therefore an offence to make a copy of the work or adapt it without the writers direct permission un less it, amongst other purposes, is used for educational purposes, critique or news report and included incidentally.3 The law regarding web designing and hosting is relatively clear for example, when a web page is designed under a contract, the webmaster is the owner of the copyright of the underlying code of that website.4 Similarly the content on the web site will also be the prerogative of the web designer and thus he becomes the service provider and hence liable for copyright action. From a preliminary analysis of the case and the UK copyright law it is apparent that there has been infringement which has occurred in the case of the text and images unless the following has been carried out :- (a) Permission of the writer has been taken. (b) It has been done for educational, news reporting, critique or other such literary purpose. In this case an additional factor will be if the source has been quoted which will not invite copyright infringement. (c) It is merely an incidental