In Italy, all intellectual works that are original and with a creative character can be protected by copyright. Copyright applies to a wide range of works, for example, the visual arts, music, literature, architecture and engineering, theater, cinema, computer programs and databases.

The copyright arises on the creation of the work and no formal fulfillment is required in order to obtain the recognition of the copyright on a certain work.

However, the fulfilments used, such as the filing or registration of a copyright, are important in order to have a certain date and an identified content.

The author, generally the person creating the work, is granted a series of moral and patrimonial rights.

Moral rights, which arise once the work is created, are inalienable, that is, they survive even in the event of transfer of the rights of economic use, and are temporally unlimited.

For author’s moral right we mean the rights of the author:

– to the authorship of the work, that is his right to be recognized as the author of the work;

– the integrity of the work, i.e. the right to forbid any modification of the work that in some way may damage its reputation;

– to publication, i.e. the author’s right to decide whether or not to publish the work.

Patrimonial rights, or rights of economic use, consist of all those actions that allow the author to achieve an economic advantage. These rights include the right to reproduce the work in any way and form; the right of distribution, therefore the right to put the work on the market, the right to diffuse the work, for example through TV, radio, Internet, etc., the right to elaborate, therefore to modify the original work , etc.

In Italy, patrimonial rights on an author’s right have a duration in time that runs from the moment of creation of the work until, in general, the end of 70 years, after the author’s death.