Intellectual Propoerty: Copyright Protection Laws for Pantomime Acts

Copyright Protection Laws for Pantomime Acts In the same way that home owners are granted full possession with no reservation of their properties, the copyright law provides an author the full control of how their work is reproduces, displayed or performed. Its main goal is to give “financial and moral encouragement to authors to invest time and effort in creating new works” (Catron, 2016). In order for a work to be copyrighted, it must have at least two components: it must be a creative work, it has to be “fixed in a tangible medium of expression” (U.S. Copyright Office, 2016). While there has been a widespread debate on the definition of “creative work”, Claudette Nouvelle’s work is definitely eligible for copyright because Chapter 1 of the US Copyright law has explicitly included it as a category for authorship. Moreover, while Claudette has never written anything down, she has definitely fixed her act in a tangible form by performing it. And as the Copyright office says in its Circular No. 1 (2012), “[A] work is under copyright protection the moment it is created and fixed in a tangible form that is perceptible either directly or with the aid of a machine or device”. The concept of the act is copyrighted, but it is important to look at how the act was performed since this is a pantomime which has choreography as an important component. If Martine performed the act differently from Claudette, she can claim that the work is her own, unless of course she explicitly admits to copying the work without permission. But even if Martine admits to copying the act, Claudette cannot file an infringement lawsuit ...