Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 - Moral Rights

Moral Rights

The Act creates a specific regime of moral rights for the first time in the United Kingdom: previously, an author's moral right had to be enforced through other torts, e.g. defamation, passing off, malicious falsehood. The author's moral rights are:

• the right to be identified as the author or the director, right which has to be "asserted" at the time of publication (ss. 77–79);
• the right to object to derogatory treatment of work (ss. 80–83);
• the right to object to false attribution of work (s. 84);
• the right to privacy of certain photographs and films (s. 85).

The moral rights of an author cannot be transferred to another person (s. 94) and pass to his heirs on his death (s. 95): however, they may be waived by consent (s. 87). The right to object to false attribution of work last for twenty years after a person death, the other moral rights last for the same period as the other copyright rights in the work (s. 86).