Copyright rewards creative endeavours by providing automatic rights for literary, dramatic, musical and artistic works including plans, advertising layouts, brochures, manuals, working drawings, photographs, paintings, films, broadcasts and computer programs. It protects the expression or form that ideas take and not the ideas themselves.

There is no system of registration for copyright protection in Australia.

A work is protected automatically from the time it is first recorded in some way, provided it has resulted from its creator's skill and effort and is not simply copied from another work. For example, as soon as a poem is written, or a song is recorded, it is protected.

For more information on copyright, including the new rights of attribution of authorship and integrity of authorship, visit the Australian Copyright Council website.

What's next...

• Do your market research before commercialising your product.
• Hiring a patent or trade mark lawyer