Copyright
Why it is worth defending copyright and related rights
Protection
Reputation
Financial benefits
Copyright and related rights services
Related Rights
What Are Related Rights?
Related rights are the rights of performers, phonogram producers, broadcasters and film producers, protecting their financial interests – and, for performers, also their moral interests. In Lithuania they are regulated by the Law on Copyright and Related Rights and consist of economic and moral rights.
Economic and moral rights
Economic rights make it possible to permit or prohibit the use of performances, phonograms and films and to receive remuneration for this. Moral rights apply only to performers – these are the right to one’s name and to the integrity of the performance.
Copyright
Answers to frequently asked questions about copyright and its protection
Copyright is the exclusive right to works, which arises from the moment a work is created. For an object created by a person to be granted copyright protection, it must be an original literary, scientific or artistic work expressed in some objective form. Copyright protects works, but not ideas, methods of operation or procedures. These rights can effectively protect the author’s economic, creative and legal interests.
In Lithuania, the defence and enforcement of copyright is defined by the Law on Copyright and Related Rights. The provisions of the Berne Convention also apply to the protection of copyright.
Copyright consists of the author’s economic rights and the author’s personal moral rights to the work they have created. The author’s economic rights are of an economic nature – they give the author the right to control any use of their work and also ensure the possibility of receiving remuneration for such use. A work can be used in various ways – translated, published, reproduced, distributed, adapted, publicly displayed, publicly performed or publicly communicated, and so on. The copyright owner may permit or prohibit others from using their work in the ways mentioned. The author also has the right to dispose of their work – to transfer their rights to the work or part of it to others.
The author’s moral rights define the author’s name, reputation, honour and similar intangible aspects. The author’s moral rights are the right to the author’s name and its mention, to the integrity of the author’s work, and the prohibition of others altering the work.
Registration of the author’s rights to their work is not mandatory. If a work meets the aforementioned requirements for a copyright object, the author of that work acquires the author’s economic and moral rights from the moment the work is created.
Copyright is protected by law for the author’s entire life and for a further 70 years after their death, while the author’s personal moral rights are protected indefinitely in the territory of Lithuania. The author’s economic rights may be inherited by will or under local law. Once the statutory term of protection of the author’s economic rights expires, this copyright protection is continued by the institution authorised by the Government – the Ministry of Culture.
The requirement to obtain the author’s permission in order to use their intellectual property does not apply when a work is criticised, quoted, or when a link is shared to a work available on a freely accessible website. The author’s permission is also not required when a caricature or parody is created from or based on the work. This also applies to so-called digital “memes” – these fall under the parody genre, and those who create them do not need to obtain the author’s permission to use the work. In all other cases, copyright is protected and it is prohibited to use the author’s intellectual property without the author’s permission.
