7 - Works Outside Copyright Protection – Part I

Summary

This chapter introduces categories of ‘works’ (on our use of that term) that form part of national public domains as they are not protected at all by copyright. Under international copyright law, two main elements set the scope of works falling within the Berne Convention: an implied minimum threshold for protection and a requirement that a work falls within a protected category. First, the chapter engages in comparative analysis of works that fail the minimum requirements for protection, such as works that do not satisfy an originality (or ‘creativity’) threshold or that are not fixed in a material form. Second, the chapter explains and analyses, from a comparative perspective, works that are ‘impliedly’ excluded from copyright protection as they fall outside of the scope of protected works.