IPR-001 to IPR-014, Intellectual Property and Registered Names
Not law. Written from the decisions taken in the Registered Names and IP discussion, not invented here.
Numbered consecutively, like every other category. The earlier scheme left gaps for later insertions - 001 to 014 copyright, the 020s for machine output, the 030s for names, the 050s for marks - which implied about thirty entries before anything was written. GGL, CIT and POC all run continuously and none of them is long enough for gaps to matter. Neither is this.
Fourteen entries covering three subjects that currently have no law at all.
Copyright
IPR-001: Copyright. When you make something original, you own the copyright in it straight away. You do not have to register it or mark it. If several people put original work into the same thing, they own it together.
IPR-002: How long it lasts. Copyright lasts for your lifetime and 50 more years, counted from the end of the year you die. If several people own a work together, the 50 years start when the last of them dies.
IPR-003: What the owner decides. Only the owner can copy, change, translate, publish, perform or share the work, or let someone else do it. They can give permission on any terms they like, including for free and to everybody.
IPR-004: Being named. You have the right to be named as the maker wherever your work is used, and to object if someone changes it in a way that damages your reputation. You keep both of those even if you sell the copyright.
IPR-005: What anyone can do without asking. You do not need permission to quote a work, review it, criticise it, report on it, teach from it or study it privately, as long as you use no more of it than you need and name the maker where you can.
Work made with software
IPR-006: Work you made using software. If you make something using software, it is entirely yours. It does not matter that the software produced part of what came out. A synthesiser, an effect, a generator inside a tool are instruments, and using one is like playing any other instrument.
IPR-007: What a machine made on its own. If a machine produces something and no person made creative choices about it, nobody owns it. If a person then picks from it, edits it or arranges it into something, that person owns what they added, not the raw output. Translating a work by machine creates nothing new to own, and you still need the owner's permission to make the translation at all.
Registered names
IPR-008: Registered names. You can register one artist or professional name with the Union. It sits next to your legal name and does not replace it. You can use it on your passport and ID card, in contracts, when writing to the Union, on credits and bylines, and in public office. Anything you do under it binds you exactly as your legal name would.
A job title is not part of the name. The Union puts the title in front of whoever holds the job, and it moves on when they do.
IPR-009: Showing you use the name. To register a name you have to show you have been publicly using it for at least six months. You need at least two separate sources carrying a date you did not set yourself. Something you published yourself only counts if somebody else fixed the date.
IPR-010: When a name can be turned down. Registry staff can turn a name down for three reasons only: another citizen already has it, it claims a government job you do not hold, or you are using it to dodge a debt or a court decision. There is no other reason, and they have to say which one applies.
IPR-011: Changing it. You can change your registered name once every two years. Going back to just your legal name has no limit, and you can always take back a name you used before. Your name has to be different from the names registered now, but not from names nobody holds any more. Registering a name does not stop other people using it.
IPR-012: Names on documents. Your passport and ID card show your legal name in the machine-readable strip at the bottom, and your registered name on an "also known as" line that people read.
Trade marks
IPR-013: Trade marks. A citizen, or a business of the Union, can register a mark for their goods or services. It counts between members of the Union and in anything under the Union's authority. It counts nowhere else, and the Union has to say so plainly when it registers one.
IPR-014: Marking a trade mark. You can put the small "trade mark" symbol next to a registered mark, or the service version of it for a service. Neither is required. Do not use the circled R on a mark that is only registered here: that symbol says a national office registered the mark, which is not true, and it is against the law in places where members actually publish. A mark marked that way cannot be enforced under these laws.
Notes
Fifty years, not seventy. Fifty is the lowest the main international agreement on copyright allows, and it is what most countries used before the longer term was lobbied in. Longer is a choice, not a requirement, and the shorter one suits a Union with no big rights-holding industry pushing for it.
IPR-006 exists because IPR-007 alone would sweep up ordinary work. A sequencer producing notes you composed, an arpeggiator whose output you audition and place, a filter, a synthesiser: these are instruments. Without IPR-006 the rule about machine output could be read to strip authorship from anyone who used a computer, which is everyone.
The line in IPR-007 is human creative choice, not whether a machine was involved. Asking a model for a piece and taking it unchanged produces something nobody owns. Selecting among outputs, editing them, arranging them into something is authorship in what you did. The translation sentence is there because the two questions get confused: a machine translation is not itself protected, and making one is still an act only the author can permit.
Attribution and integrity survive transfer (IPR-004), which is the ordinary position in most of the world outside the United States, and matters more than usual here because the Union's members are largely people who make things and license them out.
IPR-014 describes the symbols instead of printing them, because a law full of glyphs reads like a style guide and ages badly. What matters: the "trade mark" symbol is fine and optional. The circled R is not, because using it for a mark only registered here is a false claim that a national office registered it, and that is actionable in the countries members actually publish in. The penalty is that the mark cannot be enforced here, rather than a fine, because a fine the Union cannot collect abroad is not a penalty.
IPR-013 is honest about being inert. An MDU trade mark binds MDU members and does nothing against a company in another country. Requiring the Union to say so at registration keeps its register from ever looking like it is pretending to be a national office.
A title of office is not part of the name. This was the one question left open, and the answer follows from IPR-010 rather than from convenience. If an office could be part of a Registered Name, somebody could register a name containing an office they did not hold, which is precisely the deception IPR-010 refuses. So offices cannot live inside names at all: the Union places the title in front of the name of whoever currently holds it, and it passes to the next holder with the office.
The practical effect is that a Registered Name never needs review because its holder took or left an office. The name is the name; the title comes and goes around it.