Promoting Entrepreneurship and Protecting Copyright of Authors: Revisiting to the Traditional Meanings of Originality and Authorship of Copyright Law

Abstract

In this paper, it is argued that even today's changing face of objectives of copyright protection and its underlying rationale have a direct bearing on some issues of copyright law. For example, from the very inception of the evolution of copyright law, it was thought that the primary purpose of recognition of this right is to protect the rights of author or creator of a work rather than that of securing the rights of the person who has made arrangements to complete the work by way of organizing matters and providing necessary financial assistance. This phenomenon is yet accepted in copyright law and even further advocated by writers highlighting that copyright is a way gives property rights in relation to mental labour or intellectual creative labour. In other word, arguably copyright rests on creativity rather than investment! Despite following the same principle in application and enforcement of copyright law, trends of modern copyright law is much more favourable in determining and securing the rights of these investors or, in other word, as commonly known, entrepreneurs rather than that of the rights of real authors or creators. This situation is obviously reflective in some copyright concepts such as copyrights of employer, joint ownership/authorship or co-authorship, concept of moral rights etc. This paper analyses the dominating nature of copyright ownership of enterprises/ investors and private organizations over the traditional copyright ownership of actual creators of works and recommends necessary limitations to be imposed upon entrepreneurs in acquiring full copyright ownership by analysing the concept of joint authorship and moral right under copyright law. It further emphasizes the importance of providing a broad definition for the idea of originality in the context of the present copyright law development in Sri Lanka.