Blogs are an exciting way to express ideas and images and attorney Tyrone Walker, a director at Moore Attorneys, explained how bloggers can protect their work.
Walker defined a blog as a discussion, informational website or web page which includes text entries or posts which are often informal.
“Anyone can start their own blog as it’s the new way of raising one’s opinion about something in a quick easy-to-read article which can be published on the Internet,” he said.
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He advised bloggers on how they could protect the content on their blog.
“Firstly, we can protect the name of the blog by means of a trademark. Some examples of blogs protected by means of trademarks include Lovefood, Blog, The Pretty Blog, Freshly Blogged and Stellenblog.”
The second form of protection comes in the form of copyright law. Copyright law is not like a trademark, patent or design whereby it is registered on a government database.
“Copyright would normally automatically subsist and provides the creator of an original work with exclusive legal rights. An exception to this rule is cinematograph films which can be registered.”
Copyright covers all works which are written down, musical works such as songs, artistic works such as paintings, films, sound recordings, broadcasts, programme-carrying signals, published editions and computer programs.
“The Internet has undoubtedly changed the way people treat copyrighted material. Yet the mere fact that it has become common for people to uplift material from the Internet does not make it legal.”
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A recent example of copyright infringement in South Africa is the Moneyweb versus Media24 case. The issue was whether Media24, owner of the online financial news aggregator, Fin24, infringed Moneyweb’s copyright in seven articles.
Walker said the articles had been written by journalists for Moneyweb, and Fin24 had used parts of the articles in its publication.
“The judge held that, of the seven articles, only three actually enjoyed copyright because they failed to show that the creation of the articles involved their own skill or labour. The judge held that copyright in only one article had been infringed as there had almost been word-for-word copying.”
A blog may possibly be made up of a written piece, a video and or a painting or drawing by the blogger. According to Walker, the Copyright Act will cover all of these works automatically as long as they are original and are created by the owner.
“I always recommend that an owner of a copyright mark his material or work with the copyright symbol. An example can be Copyright © 2017 Tyrone Walker of Moore Attorneys Inc.
“So the next time you create your own blog or even a business presentation, please don’t forget the © symbol.”
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