Intellectual Property and Copyright in Jordanian Legislation

ABSTRACT

Author must be original in his work to deserve the protection. Therefore, if an artist creates an image which is a copy of an existing image and adds a few elements of his own, the image will not be considered as original and will not be protected by the copyright law. The subject matter of material copyright is in the work itself and not the idea behind it. This means that if two people come up with the same idea by chance and independent of each other, each of them can potentially claim copyright in their respective works. The subject matter is also required to be of a kind defined in the regulations, and the work must generally have been made by a qualifying person. This means that from the moment a piece of music is written down, a picture painted, or a piece of software coded, it is protected by copyright. The material copyright law in Jordan is an object of intellectual property law. Also, the material copyright protects the rights of the author of a particular piece of work for a specific time. Copyright is that branch of law which protects the results of intellectual effort from unauthorized exploitation. It is designed to protect the original works of authors, artists, composers, and others and can take a number of forms. Copyright is an automatic right which arises at the moment the work is created and fixed in a tangible form which is perceptible either directly or with the aid of a machine or device.

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