Works of authors are not protected only by copy right but also moral rights[1] which are independent of the economic rights and grants the right to claim authorship of the work and object to any distortion, mutilation or other modification of, or other derogatory action in relation to, the said work, which would be prejudicial to his honour or reputation[2].However the author can waive such rights.[3]
France is first country where the Moral rights were recognized after that they were promulgated in Berne Convention[4]and then it has been ratified by several nations including German, China[5] and so on.
Nevertheless, the scope of moral right is not clear and is different with cultural conceptions of authorship .Under American law, moral right is protected though the judicial interpretation of several copy right, trademark, privacy and defamation statues and though the 17 U.S.C. §106A known as the Visual Artists Rights Act of 1990 (VARA)[6] which it seem to be inferior to the moral rights in French law[7].
In United Kingdom, the infringement of a moral right is considered as a violation of a statutory duty and will result in an award of damages under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988[8]. The right to object to false attribution is last for twenty years after the author’s death after the death of author, moral right usually are exercised by their heirs[9].Nonetheless, some kind of literary works is not protected by moral right for the example: Authors of copyright database ,there are no moral rights in respect of the database right[10].
Finally, even though in each country, the concept of moral rights are various in detail, the principal is still similar that is the moral right empowers the author to receive credit for her work when a work is copied, the right to anonymous as the author of a work and prevent her work from being changed without her consent.
[1] Derive from the French term that is “droit moral”
[2] Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works in 1886
[3] Swagateeka Patel,’Waiver of Moral Rights’<http://www.articlesbase.com/intellectual-property-articles/waiver-of-moral-rights-566425.html>accessed 14 November 2010
[4] William MacGrath, ‘Lecture International Copyright Law’(24 April 1998)
<http://www.taradji.com/color.html>accessed 14 Novermber 2010
[5] Uma Suthersanen,’Author's Moral Rights in UK and China’(School of African and Oriental Studies,14 January 2002)
< http://www.chinaiprlaw.com/english/forum/forum22.htm>accessed 14 November 2010
[6] Betsy Rosenblatt,’Moral Rights Basics’<http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/property/library/moralprimer.html>accessed 14 November 2010
[7] Thomas F. Cotter,’ Pragmatism,economics and the droit moral’
< http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/metaschool/fisher/integrity/Links/Articles/cotter.html >accessed 14 November 2010[8] Lionel Bently and Brad Sherman,’Intellectual Property Law’(2 nd edn, Oxford university press 2004)231
[10] David I Bainbridge,’Intellectual Property’(8 th edn,Pearson Education Limited 2010)280
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