Copyright work

Subject matter of copyright is a copyright work.

A copyright work is an original, spiritual (intellectual) creation in the literary, artistic and scientific domain, having an individual character and expressed in any manner whatsoever. The way and form of expression, the type, value or purpose of a work has no significance in being qualified as a copyright work.

For the notion of a copyright work as a basic notion of copyright law, it is essential that it concerns an original intellectual creation, or the creation of human intellectual creativity, respectively. Originality, in the sense of copyright law, does not require the absolute novelty, but the so-called subjective originality or the novelty in subjective sense is required. A work is considered to be subjectively original if the author does not imitate another work known to him. Furthermore, a work has to be in the literary, scientific, or artistic domain. In addition, it has to be pointed out that the mentioned concept has a broader meaning in the copyright law than literary works in the theory of literature or artistic works in the history of art.

The copyright protection is enjoyed by expressions, comprising a tangible form of an idea, achieved by means of various means of expression such as written or spoken word, body movement, sound, as well as two-dimensional and three-dimensional forms etc.

Pursuant to the Copyright and Related Rights Act, copyright works are:

•    works of language such as written works, oral works and computer programmes, which comprise an expression of a computer programme in any form, including preparatory design material;

•    musical works, with or without words;

•    dramatic and dramatico-musical works;

•    choreographic works and works of pantomime,

•    works of visual art in the field of painting, sculpture and graphics, regardless of material they are made of, and other works of visual arts;

•    works of architecture, such as sketches, studies, plastic and other presentations, drawings, conceptual designs and projects, master projects, project designs, plans and constructed buildings and interventions in space in the field of architecture, urbanism and landscape architecture;

•    works of applied art and industrial design;

•    photographic works and works produced by a process similar to photography;

•    audiovisual works, such as cinematographic, television, documentary, cartoon, advertising or other films and other audiovisual works expressed by images, with or without sound, in a time-organised sequence of changes, regardless of the type of background on which they are fixed;

•     journalistic works, such as articles, photographs and audiovisual clips;

•     videogames and other multimedia works;

•     cartographic works;

•     presentations of a scientific or technical nature such as drawings, plans, sketches, tables;

•     other kinds of original intellectual creations having an individual character.