CHAPTER 415
COPYRIGHT ACT
To make new provision in respect of copyright and neighbouring rights and certain “sui generis” intellectual property rights in substitution of the provisions of the Copyright Act, Cap. 196.
14th August, 2000; 1st January, 2001
ACT XIII of 2000, as amended by Acts VI of 2001 and IX of 2003.
1. The short title of this Act is the Copyright Act. Short title.
PART I
DEFINITIONS
2. In this Act, unless the context otherwise requires -Interpretation.
Amended by:“European Union” means the European Union referred to in the IX. 2003.92.
Treaty;
“artistic work” shall include, irrespective of artistic quality, any of the following, or works similar thereto: “audiovisual work” means a work that consists of a series of related images which impart the impression of motion, with or without accompanying sounds, susceptible of being made visible and, where accompanied by sounds, susceptible of being made audible;
“author” means the natural person or group of natural persons who created the work eligible for copyright but in the case of an audiovisual work it includes the principal director but excludes the producer of the first fixation of the audiovisual work;
“Board” means the Copyright Board established under article 45;
“body of persons” means any company or association of persons whether corporate or unincorporated, whether vested with legal personality or not, and includes any other body however called having legal personality;
“broadcasting” means the transmission by wireless means for the public reception of sounds or of images and sounds or of the representations thereof, including transmission by satellite. Broadcast does not include a rebroadcast;
“broadcasting authority” means the Broadcasting Authority established by article 118 of the Constitution;
“broadcasting organization” means any broadcaster whether licensed under the Broadcasting Act or under any other law, and includes a broadcasting contractor operating in Malta;
“cable retransmission” means the simultaneous, unaltered and unabridged retransmission by a cable or any other material carrier for reception by the public of an initial transmission by wire or over the air, including that by satellite, of television or radio programmes intended for reception by the public, from within Malta or from a State in which the exclusive right to authorize cable retransmission of works eligible for copyright or neighbouring rights is protected under an international agreement to which Malta is also a party;
“collecting society” means any organization which manages or administers copyright or neighbouring rights as its sole purpose or as one of its main purposes as regulated by the provisions of this Act;
“collective work” means a work which has been created by two or more physical persons at the initiative and under the direction of a physical person or legal entity with the understanding that it will be disclosed by the latter person or entity under his or its own name and that the identity of the contributing physical persons will not be indicated in the work;
“commercial exploitation” in relation to semiconductor product topographies means the sale, rental, leasing or any other method of commercial distribution, or an offer for these purposes:
Provided that where exploitation takes place under conditions of confidentiality to the extent that no further distribution to third parties occurs there shall not be deemed to have been “commercial exploitation”;
“communication to the public” means the transmission of a work by wire or wireless means and for the purpose of article 7 includes the making available to the public of the work in such a way that members of the public may access the work from a place and at a time individually chosen by them:
The mere provision of physical facilities for enabling or making of a communication does not in itself amount to an act of communication to the public;
“communication to the public by satellite” means the act of introducing, under the control and responsibility of a broadcasting organization, the programme-carrying signals intended for reception by the public into an uninterrupted chain of communication leading to the satellite and down towards the earth and the State where such an act takes place shall be deemed to be the place of origin of that act of communication to the public by satellite:
Provided that if the programme-carrying signals are encrypted, then there is communication to the public by satellite if the means for decrypting the broadcast are provided to the public by the broadcasting organisation or with its consent:
Provided further that if the act of communication to the public by satellite takes place in a State other than Malta or other than a State in which the exclusive right to authorize or prevent the satellite broadcasting of a work eligible for copyright or neighbouring rights is protected under an international agreement to which Malta is also a party, if the programme-carrying signals are transmitted to the satellite from an uplink station situated in Malta, that act of communication to the public by satellite shall be deemed to have occurred in Malta so that the rights provided for by this Act shall be exercisable against the person operating the uplink station, or else in the absence of an uplink station in Malta, if a broadcasting organisation established in Malta has commissioned the act of communication to the public by satellite, that act shall be deemed to have occurred in Malta and the rights provided for by this Act shall be exercisable against that broadcasting organisation;
“computer program” includes computer programs whatever may be the mode or form of their expression including those which are incorporated in hardware, interfaces which provide for the physical interconnection and interaction or the interoperability between elements of software and hardware and preparatory design material leading to the development of a computer program:
Provided that the nature of the preparatory design material is such that a computer program can result therefrom at a later stage;
“copy” means a reproduction in written or graphic form including digital reproduction, in the form of a recording or audiovisual work, or in any other material form, so however that an object shall not be taken to be a copy of an architectural work unless the object is a building or model;
“copyright” means copyright under this Act;
“database” means a collection of independent works, data or other materials arranged in a systematic or methodical way and individually accessible by electronic or other means without it being necessary for these materials to have been physically stored in an organized manner but does not extend to computer programs used in the making or operation of a database accessible by electronic means comprised within the term “computer program”;
“distribution” means the making available to the public by sale or other transfer of ownership;
“fixation” means the embodiment of sounds, images, or both, or digital representations thereof, in any material form, from which they can be perceived, reproduced or communicated through a device;
“lawful” means done in compliance with provisions of this Act, and “lawfully” shall be construed accordingly;
“lending” means making available for use, for a limited period of time and not for direct or indirect economic or commercial advantage, when it is made through establishments which are accessible to the public:
Provided that even when lending by such an establishment gives rise to payment of an amount, as long as this amount does not go beyond what is necessary to cover the operational costs of the establishment, there is no direct or indirect economic or commercial advantage within the meaning of this Act;
“licence” means a lawfully granted licence permitting the doing of an act controlled by copyright or neighbouring rights;
“literary work” shall include, irrespective of literary quality, any of the following, or works similar thereto: but save as provided in article 12 of the Statute Law Revision Act, 1980, does not include any written law, law report or judicial decisions;
“Malta” shall have the same meaning as assigned to it by article 124 of the Constitution of Malta;
“Member State” means a state which is a member of the European Union;
“Minister” means the Minister responsible for the protection of copyright and neighbouring rights and includes to the extent of the authority given, any person authorised by the Minister in that behalf for any purpose of this Act other than for the purpose of article 59;
“musical work” means any musical work, irrespective of musical quality, and includes works composed for musical accompaniment;
“owner of copyright” means the author who is first owner, an assignee or an exclusive licensee, as the case may be, of a copyright and in the case of a collective work, the first owner of copyright shall be the natural or legal person under whose initiative and direction the work has been created;
“perceptual disability” means a disability that prevents or inhibits a person from reading or hearing a literary, musical, dramatic or artistic work in its original format, and includes such a disability resulting from:
(a) severe or total impairment of sight or hearing or the inability to focus or move one’s eyes; “performance” means the direct rendition of the work to a public which takes place under such circumstances that the works performed can be perceived by the public without any intermediate communication;
“performers” includes singers, musicians, actors or other artists who sing, deliver, declaim, play in, act in or otherwise perform literary, musical and artistic works or expressions of folklore and includes also singers, musicians, actors or other artists who sing, play in or perform in variety, circus and folklore shows or exhibitions;
“person” includes a body of persons;
“prescribed” means prescribed by regulations made under article 59;
“rebroadcast” means simultaneous broadcasting by one broadcasting organization of the broadcast of another broadcasting organization not under its control, whether situated in Malta or abroad, and “rebroadcasting” shall be construed accordingly:
Provided that “later rebroadcast” shall mean only any such subsequent broadcast and “later rebroadcasting” shall be construed accordingly;
“rental” means making available for use, for a limited period of time and for direct or indirect economic or commercial advantage;
“reproduction” means the making of one or more copies in any material form of a literary, musical or artistic work, audiovisual work or sound recording and includes storing such work in any medium by electronic means;
“rights-management information” means any information provided by rightholders which identifies the work or other subject-matter referred to in this Act, the author or any other rightholder, or information about the terms and conditions of use of the work or other subject-matter, and any numbers or codes that represent such information;
“satellite” means any satellite operating on frequency bands which, under international telecommunications law are reserved for the broadcast of signals for reception by the public or which are reserved for closed, point-to-point communication. In the latter case, however, the circumstances in which individual reception of the signals takes place must be comparable to those which apply in the first case;
“semiconductor product” means the final or an intermediate form of any product consisting of a body of material which includes a layer of semiconducting material, having one or more layers composed of conducting, insulating or semiconducting material, the layers being arranged in accordance with a predetermined three-dimensional pattern and intended to perform, exclusively or together with other functions, an electronic function;
Cap. 460.
Works eligible for copyright.
“semiconductor product topography” means a series of related images, however fixed or encoded, representing the three dimensional pattern of the layers of which a semiconductor product is composed and in which series, each image has the pattern or part of the pattern of a surface of the semiconductor product at any stage of its manufacture;
“sound recording” means the fixation of a sequence of sounds or of a digital representation of sounds capable of being perceived aurally and of being reproduced, but does not include a soundtrack associated with an audiovisual work;
“technological measures” means any technology, device or component that, in the normal course of its operation, is designed to prevent or restrict acts, in respect of works or other subject-matter, which are not authorised by the rightholder of any copyright or neighbouring right or the sui generis rights as provided for by this Act. Technological measures shall be deemed “effective” where the use of a protected work or other subject-matter is controlled by the rightholders through application of an access control or protection process, such as encryption, scrambling or other transformation of the work or other subject-matter or a copy control mechanism, which achieves the protection objective;
“the Treaty” has the same meaning assigned to it by the European Union Act;
“work of joint authorship” means a work produced by the collaboration of two or more authors in which the contribution of each author is not separable from the contribution of the other author or authors.
(2) For the purposes of this Act the following provisions shall apply with respect to publication: PART II
COPYRIGHT
3. (1) Subject to the provisions of this article the following works shall be eligible for copyright:
(a) artistic works; 4. (1) Copyright shall be conferred by this article on every work eligible for copyright of which the author or, in the case of a work of joint authorship, any of the joint authors, is, at the time when the work is made: (2) The terms of copyright protection conferred by this article shall be calculated according to the following table:
TABLE
Type of Work Date of Expiration of Copyright
(i) Literary, musical Seventy years after the end of the or artistic works and year in which the author dies, database irrespective of the date when the work
is lawfully made available to the public. (ii)Audiovisual works Seventy years after the end of the year in which the last of the following person dies: the principal director, the author of the screenplay, the author of the dialogue and the composer of music specifically created for use in the audiovisual work.
(3) In the case of an anonymous or pseudonymous literary, musical or artistic work, or in the case of a collective work, the
Qualification for copyright protection by virtue of authors.
Qualification for copyright protection by reference to country where work is made or published.
Copyright works of Government and international bodies.
copyright in the work subsists until the end of the expiration of 70 years from the end of the year in which it was lawfully made available to the public or after the end of the year in which the work was made if it has not been made available to the public:
Provided that when the pseudonym adopted by the author leaves no doubt as to his identity or in the event of the identity of the author becoming known during the period referred to in the preceding paragraph of this sub-article or where in the case of collective works by a body of persons the natural persons who have created the work are individually identifiable in the versions of the work made available to the public the terms of copyright protection shall be calculated in accordance with the provision of paragraph 5. (1) Copyright shall be conferred by this article on every work which is eligible for copyright and which is made or first published in Malta or in a State in which such works are protected under an international agreement to which Malta is also a party and which has not been the subject of copyright conferred by article 4.
(2) Copyright conferred on a work by this article shall have the same duration as is provided for in article 4 in relation to the same type of work.
6. (1) Copyright shall be conferred by this article on every work which is eligible for copyright and which is made by or under the direction or control of the Government of Malta and also such governments of other States, international bodies or other intergovernmental organisations as may be prescribed by the Minister responsible for the Industrial Property Office. 7. (1) Copyright in an audiovisual work, a database, a literary, musical or artistic work shall be the exclusive right to authorise or prohibit the doing in Malta in respect of the protected material in its totality or substantial part thereof, either in its original form or in any form recognisably derived from the original of any of the following: Provided that the right to authorise or prohibit the cable retransmission of a television broadcast shall be exercisable only through a collecting society. Nature of copyright in an audiovisual work, database, literary, musical and artistic work.
Substituted by:
IX. 2003.93.
Cap. 350.
Exhaustion of the distribution rights.
Substituted by:
IX. 2003.94.
Restriction with regard to certain works.
Substituted by:
IX. 2003.95.
society and he may claim such rights within a period of three years from the date of the cable retransmission which includes his work or other protected subject-matter.
(5) Where no agreement is concluded regarding authorization of the cable retransmission of a broadcast, either party may call upon the assistance of one or more mediators appointed by the chairman of the Malta Arbitration Centre, unless otherwise agreed to by all the parties. The tasks of the mediators shall be to provide assistance with negotiation. They may also submit proposals to the parties. It shall be assumed that all the parties accept a proposal as referred to in this subarticle if none of them expresses its opposition within a period of three months. Notice of the proposal and of any opposition thereto shall be served on the parties concerned by judicial act, unless otherwise agreed to by the parties. The mediators shall be so selected that their independence and impartiality are beyond reasonable doubt.
8. (1) The first sale or other transfer of ownership in the market of the original work enjoying copyright or copies thereof, when such sale is effected by or with the consent of the copyright owner himself, shall exhaust the exclusive distribution right in respect of that work or its copy.
(2) For the purposes of this article “market” means the market in Malta and as from the 1st May 2004 the European Union.
9. (1) Copyright in an audiovisual work, a database, a literary work other than in the case of a computer programme, a muscial or artistic work shall not include the right to authorise or prohibit communication to the public of a work for the purposes of public security or to ensure the proper performance or reporting of administrative, parliamentary or judicial proceedings; the database which the user is licensed to use; and any contractual provisions running counter to what is prescribed in this paragraph shall be null and void.
(2) Copyright in a computer programme shall not include the right to authorize or prohibit:
COPYRIGHT [CAP. 415. 11 museums, or by archives, which are not for direct or indirect economic or commercial advantage; (e) ephemeral recordings or works made by broadcasting organisations by means of their own facilities and for their own broadcasts: Provided that any reproduction of a work made under this paragraph may, if it is of exceptional documentary character be preserved in official archives; (f) reproduction of broadcasts made by social institutions pursuing non-commercial purposes, such as hospitals or prisons, on condition that the rightholders receive fair compensation; (g) the performing, playing or showing of a work in a place where no admission fee is charged in respect of such an act by any club whose aim is not profit-making; (h) the reproduction, translation, distribution or communication to the public of a work for the sole purpose of illustration for teaching or scientific research only to the extent justified by the noncommercial purpose to be achieved, and as long as the source, including the author’s name, is, unless this is impossible, indicated; (i) the reproduction, translation, distribution or communication to the public of a work for the benefit of people with a disability, which are directly related to the disability and on a non-commercial nature, to the extent required by the specific disability; (j) the reproduction by the press, translation, distribution or communication to the public of published articles on current economic, political or religious topics or of broadcast works or other subject-matter of the same character, in cases where such use is not expressly reserved, and as long as the source, including the author’s name, is indicated, or use of works or other subject-matter in connection with the reporting of current events, to the extent justified by the informatory purpose and as long as the source, including the author’s name, is, unless this is impossible, indicated; (k) the reproduction, translation, distribution or communication to the public of quotations for purposes such as criticism or review, provided that they relate to a work or other subject-matter which has already been lawfully made available to the public, as long as, unless this is impossible, the source, including the author’s name, is indicated, and that their use is in accordance with fair practice, and to the extent required by the specific purposes; (l) the reproduction, translation, distribution or