Copyright simply means that you have control over what you have created as soon as it is created, and that users have to know and respect your copyright. Since copyright is a creation of law in each country there is no such thing as an international copyright law. However, in 1886 the Berne Convention ratified a treaty that laid down a minimum set of standards for the protection of the rights of the creators of copyrighted works around the world. The treaty has been revised and amended several times since and is now administered by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO).
Question: I am just a student, do I have any responsibility to know about copyright?
- Yes, you do. Licensing is the main mechanism for the exercise of copyright and related rights and the use of electronic resources are covered by license agreements. These licenses are contracts made between the Library and the Publisher that set out specific rules to follow when using electronic resources. This means that when you use ebooks, e-journals and databases that are available to students and staff at Lund University, it is your responsibility to know how you may and may not use them.
Right of quotation and copyright / Vad säger lagen om upphovs- och citaträtt? Sociala medier-guiden, Sveriges Radio (SR)
Patent- och registreringsverket:
Om upphovsrätt (in Swedish)
Om EU:s nya upphovsrättsdirektiv, Regeringskansliet (in Swedish)
Upphovsrättsdirektivet, även kallat Copyrightdirektivet eller DSM-direktivet (Digital Single Market), antogs av EU i april 2019. Direktivet måste vara genomfört i alla medlemsstater senast i juni 2021.
Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market (EUR-Lex)
The new Directive on copyright in the digital single market was agreed between the Council of the European Union, the European Parliament and the Commission and endorsed by the Council on April 2019 and must be implemented by all member states in June 2021.
Creative Commons licenses
Creative Commons is a nonprofit organization that has developed six licenses, so-called “Creative Commons licenses” that serve as a complement to copyright. The licenses allow the creator of a work to share the work and let us know how the work may be used.
World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO)
WIPO, a self-funding agency of the United Nations, is the global forum for intellectual property (IP) services, policy, information and cooperation.
What is Intellectual Property? WIPO Intellectual Property Handbook: Policy, Law and Use. This general reference work, published in 2004, covers all aspects of intellectual property (IP), including international treaties and conventions.
This chart is © 2007 by the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) and is available for your re-use under a Creative Commons Attributtion NonCommercail 2.5 License. Download this chart in PDF format
About Public Domain The concept Public domain (in Swedish: Allmän egendom) is a legal concept within U.S. copyright law and does not have any exact equivalent in European Law. In Sweden copyright protection expires 50 years after creation, or 70 years after the creator’s death, depending on the type of work. Read more about the validity of copyright in Sweden: Lag (1960:729) om upphovsrätt till litterära och konstnärliga verk (in Swedish).
