Legal Journal

Under the Draft Amendment to Law on Intellectual and Artistic Works Fundamental Principle Is Added to the Law With Regards to Ideas and Methods

The draft amendment regulates with a provision introduced to the definitions that ideas, methods, mathematical concepts and theories would not be under the protection of works. In fact, the very first question appears on this is “whether regulating such a fundamental issue of Copyright Law in the definitions is systematically correct."

The Law has identified the types of works according to numerus clausus principle. The intellectual product that is not mentioned in the Law cannot benefit from the protection of Copyright Law. If we begin to write the topics that are excluded from the Law, it would lead to an endless writing. Having said that, if such writing was required, it is essential to see that there are places that conflict with the provision of the second paragraph of Article 2 of the Law, "thoughts and principles that form the basis of any computer program, including the ideas and principles that form the basis of the interface, are not considered to be works of art".

As per the current wording of the Law, it is mentioned for the computer programs that "thoughts and principles" are not taken under protection. The above-mentioned new provision in the draft amendment, however, introduces a principle for all types of works, including computer programs. It would then be more convenient to combine these two provisions in a general provision. It would also prevent the use of different terms in separate that express the same concept, such as "idea" and "thought".