What does copyright protect?

Copyright is not a monopoly right like a trademark or patent. Copyright does not protect ideas, information or techniques, but the expression or material form these ideas take.

People may have the same idea, but may express it in their own material form. A good example of this is the number of landscape paintings of Tower Hill in the Warrnambool Art Gallery. Eugene von Guerard and Shay Docking both had the idea of painting pictures of Tower Hill. They observed the landscape and painted their interpretation of what they saw. The result was two different paintings.

In copyright terms, the ideas were similar but the material forms were quite different.

Practice

Can copyright protect an idea?  Answer

Sometimes people have the same or similar ideas and it is possible that two people could separately have the same idea and then produce identical works. Copyright protects the material form an idea takes. As long as one person has not just copied from the other, they may each hold copyright for their own work.

For a work to be copyright, it must be original. This means, it has to be the product of your independent skill and labour, and not copied from somewhere else.

Copyright can protect the following:

• artistic works such as paintings, drawings, cartoons, sculpture, craft, photos, maps and plans
• musical scores and jingles
• dramatic works such as dances, plays and screenplays
• literary works such as instructional manuals, reports, novels, poems, essays, computer programs, tables and compilations
• films and videos
• sound recordings
• communications 
• published editions.