Moral Rights under Copyright Law

The moral rights required to be protected under the Berne Convention, Article 6bis are the “Right of Paternity” and the “Right of Integrity.” These rights have been primarily adopted from the civil law jurisdictions which are more author centric, like France and Germany. They consider copyright to be more of a personal right of the author of the work, giving him credit for his intellectual effort and creativity. The Right of Paternity or Attribution gives the copyright owner a right to claim authorship of the work and the Right of Integrity gives the owner a right to prevent any distortion of the work which would be potentially harmful to the reputation and honour of the right holder.  Under the Right of Paternity a copyright owner can claim due credit for any of his works. Thus, if a movie has been based on a book by an author, but he hasn’t been given due credit in it, he can sue the makers to acknowledge his work.  The Right to Integrity would protect a right holder if someone distorted, mutilated or modified his work in a way that it is harmful for his reputation and name. Economic rights can be licensed, but moral rights cannot. They remain with the author even if he has assigned or licensed his other rights. Therefore, altering or modifying any work may amount to infringement of an author’s Right of Integrity unless written consent has been obtained for the same or it is reasonable under the circumstances to do so.  Moral rights are protected more vigilantly in civil law countries. In fact, in USA, moral rights are only recognized for visual works and not for literary or musical works. Moral rights are considered more of a part of the law of defamation relating to libel and slander and do not get much importance otherwise.