Intellectual Property

Journalists may come into contact with the laws related to ownership of ideas and their expression in two main ways: when they need to use the ideas or published work of others in their won reporting or publishing and when other media outlets want to reproduce the journalists' work in some new publication or broadcast. But in the field of intellectual property, journalist could well be either the user or the used, the complainant, the plaintiff or the defendant, depending on whether someone else has used their work or they have used the work of another.

Intellectual property law is defined as a group of legislative and common law rights affording protection to creative and intellectual effort and includes laws on copyright, design, patent, circuit layouts, plant varieties, confidential information, trade mark and business reputation. Plagiarism has significant ethical implications but also legal repercussions as well.

But a journalists' main concern is the law of copyright, in the Copyright Act of 1968, for the protection of their own work and the use of the work of others. There are four areas of the Copyright Act that are significant to journalist: Part III which deals with the copyright of original literary, dramatic, musical and artistic work; Part IV which deals with copyright in subject matter other than works, such as broadcast; Part V which outlines the remedies and offenses applying; and Part IX which states the enforceable moral rights of authors.

An important thing to remember is that copyright does not apply to an idea only the material expression of that idea. An idea itself can't be protected by copyright law. There is nothing in copyright law to prevent journalists from gleaning ideas or information from other sources when creating their own work. Copyright operates to protect the work of the creator.

In Australia, there is no need to put the copyright symbol on 'work' because the protection is automatic form the instant a work is created. Under copyright, the 'author' of the work is the person who has created the work, not the person who has thought of the idea. There are situations when the author of the work does not own the copyright. For example, the journalist may not own the copyright but the media outlet they work for does. Copyright is protected for 70 years after the author's death and then it is considered 'public domain' meaning permission is no longer required in order to use the material.

Journalist need to take in considerations when reproducing the work of others, such as has the copyright period expired, has the copyright holder assigned copyright to you and copyright holders can 'license' you to use the material.