NATURE OF THE PROTECTION IN THE COPYRIGHT LAW OF THE UNITED KINGDOM

Abstract

While the ancient Greek world is considered as the cradle of art and culture, the United Kingdom is undeniably the birthplace of copyright law legislation and codification. The reason for this is that the world’s first copyright law, the Queen Anne’s Statute on Copyright was born in Great Britain. Before the Statute was adopted, in the fifteenth century copyright derived from the monopoly privilages granted by the Crown to the printers. In line with the printing privilages, which are granted by the Crown, the printing trade also developed its own system of regulation through the Stationers’ Company in London. The proposal of the abovementioned Statute (from 1707) has already used the term that authors have “undoubted property” in their books. This term has been changed to the term “sole right and liberty of printing” in the adopted law, primarily because of positivistic viewpoints.