List of WTO member countries

Most if not all countries which protect international copyrights extend their copyright privileges to various treaty members. One of the organizations that member countries are often listed by intellectual property authorities as being eligible for receiving copyright protection for their citizens, subject, or residents is the World Trade Organization. Here is a list of member countries of the WTO as of the time of writing this blog:

Albania
Angola
Antigua and Barbuda
Argentina
Armenia
Australia
Austria
Bahrain
Bangladesh
Barbados
Belgium
Belize
Benin
Bolivia
Botswana
Brazil
Brunei Darussalam
Bulgaria
Burkina Faso
Burundi
Cambodia
Cameroon
Canada
Cape Verde
Central African Republic
Chad
Chile
China
Colombia
Congo
Costa Rica
Côte d'Ivoire
Croatia
Cuba
Cyprus
Czech Republic
Democratic Republic of the Congo
Denmark
Djibouti
Dominica
Dominican Republic
Ecuador
Egypt
El Salvador
Estonia
European Communities¹
Fiji
Finland
Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM)²
France
Gabon
Gambia
Georgia
Germany
Ghana
Greece
Grenada
Guatemala
Guinea
Guinea Bissau
Guyana
Haiti
Honduras
Hong Kong³
Hungary
Iceland
India
Indonesia
Ireland
Israel
Italy
Jamaica
Japan
Jordan
Kenya
Korea, Republic of⁴
Kuwait
Kyrgyz Republic
Latvia
Lesotho
Liechtenstein
Lithuania
Luxembourg
Macao, China⁵
Madagascar
Malawi
Malaysia
Maldives
Mali
Malta
Mauritania
Mauritius
Mexico
Moldova
Mongolia
Morocco
Mozambique
Myanmar
Namibia
Nepal
Netherlands and Netherlands Antilles
New Zealand
Nicaragua
Niger
Nigeria
Norway
Oman
Pakistan
Panama
Papua New Guinea
Paraguay
Peru
Philippines
Poland
Portugal
Qatar
Romania
Rwanda
Saint Kitts and Nevis
Saint Lucia
Saint Vincent & the Grenadines
Saudi Arabia
Senegal
Sierra Leone
Singapore
Slovak Republic
Slovenia
Solomon Islands
South Africa
Spain
Sri Lanka
Suriname
Swaziland
Sweden
Switzerland
Chinese Taipei⁶
Tanzania
Thailand
Togo
Tonga
Trinidad and Tobago
Tunisia
Turkey
Uganda
Ukraine
United Arab Emirates
United Kingdom
United States of America
Uruguay
Venezuela
Viet Nam
Zambia
Zimbabwe

¹What is listed by the WTO as European Communities is actually now known as the European Union.
²Also commonly known as the Republic of Macedonia or simply Macedonia.
³Hong Kong is a part of China, but entered the WTO when it was still under the control of the United Kingdom. It continues to have a largely separate governance structure from mainland China.
⁴Not to be confused with the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, which is also commonly known as North Korea. The Korea which is a part of the WTO is the one commonly known as South Korea.
⁵Like Hong Kong, Macao is a part of China but has a more independent administrative regime.
⁶Chinese Taipei is not controlled by the People's Republic of China, but instead refers to the Republic of China, or as it is more commonly known, Taiwan.

What is and is not copyrighted

Generally a copyright exists once a unique performance, work of art, or literary work comes into existence. However, not all content is considered to be copyrighted.

Writing methods of doing something, for example, is usually not considered copyrighted. Recipes and chemical preparation instructions are not copyrighted upon creation. However, certain content in relation to them might be copyrighted.

For example, writing, "Stir for 5 minutes and then add half a cup of widgets" would probably not be copyrighted because it's a basic set of universal technical instructions.

However, writing, "I stirred this for 6 minutes and then added half a cup of widgets, which reminds me of this one time I ate bad widgets and ended up annihilating my toilet the next day," might be considered copyrighted because it's actually a unique story trailing off into something other than a basic formula.

In addition, one might write their recipe in the form of a poem, or a song, or an audio-visual performance. In all of these cases the formula becomes only a part of a larger creative performance, and you will find that many cooking shows are protected by copyright law for this reason.

Facts can not be copyrighted, either. You cannot state that George Washington was the first President of the United States and expect to sue someone for repeating that fact. However, like the methods example above, if you made a creative performance based around the fact, such as a movie about his life, or a poem about Washington, that would be copyrighted.

There are other things that might be protected by some form of intellectual property law, but are not protected by copyright law. For example, many people often lump patents and trademarks into the same category as copyrights. You cannot register a trademark or a patent as a copyright. Trademarks are, as the name implies, marks used in the course of commerce. Though the artistic aspects of a graphic trademark might be copyrighted separately, many marks are just single words which cannot be copyrighted.

Erroneously registering trademarks as copyrights might sometimes not be too big of a deal, though, since trademarks are often protected automatically after they become established as being associated with a product.

The same does not hold true for patents. Patents are the right to exclude others from reproducing an invention for a period of time, and must be registered using a country's (usually intensive) patent registration process. Do not invent a flying car and expect that your invention will be protected by registering a copyright!

To summarize, most unique creative performances such as art, music, video, and literary works are considered copyrighted, while patents, trademarks, and basic formulae are not.

Proving a website copyright

As mentioned earlier, websites are copyrighted as soon as you create them, and you can register the copyright with the appropriate intellectual property office. However, if other people dispute your copyright, then you will want to have evidence to prove that you are the real creator of the disputed material.

This is where that "Copyright [Insert creator's name here] 2009" phrase printed on so many items, though legally unnecessary for material to be copyrighted, comes in handy. The reason it is on books, CDs, DVDs, etc., is so that when a first edition is published, the fact that so many people can testify they had a copy of it with the copyright holder's name and year of creation on it creates good evidence of that person's ownership of copyright.

On a website, however, the copyright phrase by itself is insufficient because it can be readily modified at any time. Both the copyright phrase and an archiving service should be used. To have a website archived for a free, a webmaster can submit their website to the "WayBackMachine" at http://www.archive.org/. Archive.org will crawl the website within a few weeks, and add it to its archive. If there's ever a dispute over copyrighted content, a person might boost their case by showing that their website was archived as existing first.

If you are a copyright holder, keep in mind that you do not need to put your name on a website as the copyright holder if you do not want to give up your privacy. There are ways to still establish that the archived website belongs to you, such as getting a registered business name in your jurisdiction linked to your real name, and posting the registered business name as the copyright holder. If you are running a website with your own top-level domain name, use your real name but buy a WHOIS privacy feature, and if it should become necessary you can prove you owned the archived website in court by showing your domain registration documents.


RELATED LINKS (Open in new window)

Internet Archive: Wayback Machine

How to register a copyright in New Zealand

If you live in New Zealand or publish content there, you might be wondering how to register a copyright in that particular country. The answer is: you don't.

Unlike many English-speaking countries, New Zealand lacks any official copyright registration process. This does not mean that original content is not copyrighted in New Zealand; it means that one must find more unique ways to establish the ownership of a copyright. (Visit Cyber Law Facts' article on proving a website copyright for more information on ways to establish copyright, particularly as it relates to online content.)

For more information, please see the New Zealand government's information page on their country's copyright law, entitled, Copyright Protection in New Zealand.

How to register a copyright in Canada

Registering a copyright in Canada is pretty straightforward. All you have to do is create your content, give it a name, determine whether it is considered copyrighted material, and then register it with the Canadian Intellectual Property Office (CIPO). As a helpful guide to determining whether your material can be registered, Section 5 of Canada's Copyright Act lists the kind of content in which copyright subsists.

As of the writing of this blog entry, registering a copyright online with the CIPO costs $50, and registering it with them by mail costs $65. These prices are, of course, in Canadian dollars.

The following are the detailed steps involved in the registration process:

1) Create protected content. The Copyright Act states that original literary, dramatic, musical, and artistic work is copyrighted if created by a citizen, subject of, or person ordinarily resident in a Berne convention country, a country party to the Universal Copyright Convention, or a country which is a member of the World Trade Organization. This covers most countries around the world.

2) Give your content a title. This is important so that you can properly name it when you register the copyright.

3) Visit the CIPO's copyright site and register your copyright. If you want to register it online, which is faster and $15 cheaper than doing it by mail, visit the online copyright application page and follow the instructions. You will have to register for a free account before you can submit the registration application. If you want to submit the application by mail, visit the offline copyright application page and follow those instructions, instead.

4) If your application appears to be valid, the CIPO will often mail you a registration certificate in a matter of days. If it does not, you may be asked to modify your application and send it in again. Good luck!


RELEVANT LINKS (Open in new window)

Canadian Intellectual Property Office: Copyrights
List of World Treaty Organization member countries

How to copyright a website

With the amount of plagiarism on the Internet by people looking to make revenue from a website without putting any effort into it, plenty of webmasters and bloggers are rightfully interested in knowing how to give their blog copyright protection, and how to enforce that copyright.

Many people believe that they need to file a copyright registration or write "Copyright [insert webmaster's name] 2009" somewhere on the page in order to have an enforceable copyright over their content, but in reality a person who wants to have copyright protection over something they write must simply, well, write it.

Writing "Copyright ____ 2009" is often done with creative works not because it's necessary to establish a copyright, but because it's helpful in proving who created a certain work first, in the event that one person plagiarizes another. Registering a copyright with the government is similarly unnecessary, but, depending on the country, usually creates a presumption of ownership over the copyrighted material that must be disproven in court.

In short, if you are worried about how to copyright something, just write it!


RELATED LINKS (Open in new window)

Proving a website copyright
What is and is not copyrighted