In the creative world, it’s easy to overlook the administrative and legal side of business. Knowing what your rights are in your own work, and how you can protect your work from being stolen is critical if you don’t want others to blatantly copy or steal your artwork, says Attorney and Intellectual Property Law expert, Senamiso Moyo.
Copyright law usually deals with protecting your creative ideas.
Moyo says, “Copyright law is a child of Intellectual Property so it’s one of many forms of Intellectual Property Law so there’s different forms, you have patents which protects your intentions, you have trademarks which protects your brand names, you have register designs which protects how your product looks and then you have copyrights which protects your creative work… anything that is born of your mind.”
Moyo says the first step in protecting yourself as a creative is to expressed your idea in a material form.
“Copyright comes into being once your ideas are expressed in material form and by material form I mean if its a book your writing once you type it out and it becomes a hard copy, if its a computer program once you’ve written the source code. And I guess the first step that you have to take to protect your idea is to write it down so make sure that you actually have a legal right that your idea is manifested into a work that’s protected by copyright.”
He also says that when pitching an idea to a company withhold as much information as possible and include a nondisclosure agreement.
In the video below, Moyo explains how to protect your work as a creative:
