Copyrightprotection
Copyright is a personal right that arises automatically with the creation of a work and to which the author of the work is entitled. It protects the author of a literary, scientific or artistic work against the unauthorised commercial exploitation of his creative output and against infringements of his intellectual and moral interests in the work. The most common types of works are literary works (written works and speeches), musical works, dramatic works (theatre, ballet, pantomime), works of visual art and architecture, photographic and cinematographic works. Databases are also subject to copyright. The copyright on computer programmes is particularly close to industrial property protection. Anonymous and pseudonymous works are a special case in copyright law. Their authors can register in a copyright register maintained by the German Patent and Trade Mark Office.
Computer software
The protection of computer software, provided it is an individual work, is subject to copyright law, which is the area of advice provided by attorneys-at-law. Under copyright law, the specific computer program is protected as a set of instructions, but not the idea underlying the computer program. A computer program as such, which for example performs a prime number calculation, is excluded from patent protection.
In contrast to this, software-related inventions are patentable. For software-related inventions to be patentable, the invention must have a technical component or involve a solution to a technical problem. An example of this would be a software program that controls or regulates a fan heater by calculating the heating time based on the evaluation of sensor data.
Please contact us if you have any questions about the protection of a software-related invention.
Register of anonymous and pseudonymous works
Anonymous and pseudonymous works are works whose author's true name is not publicly known. In order to ensure that the authors of anonymous and pseudonymous works can also fully enjoy copyright protection, it is possible to have an anonymous or pseudonymous work and its actual authorship entered in the copyright register maintained by the German Patent and Trade Mark Office. This not only allows the creator to prove their personal claim to the copyright of a work, but it also extends the duration of copyright protection for the work in question.