Copyright 

Copyright is the intellectual property right most people meet before they meet any law, in the form of a notice on a book, a song or a piece of software. It is also structurally unusual among IP rights: protection is automatic and unregistered, arising on creation without any application or grant. That difference shapes almost every question that follows, because there is no register to consult and no examination to have passed.

What copyright protects

Copyright protects original expression, not the idea, fact, or information that expression conveys. Two people can independently have the same idea for a story, a database structure, or a piece of software, and each may hold copyright in their own particular expression of it without infringing the other. This idea–expression dichotomy is fundamental: copyright never gives anyone a monopoly over a concept, a method, a style, or a fact.

Protection attaches to defined categories of subject matter — literary, dramatic, musical and artistic works, and separately, sound recordings, films, broadcasts and published editions. A work must be original, meaning it results from the author's own independent skill and effort rather than being copied from another source; it need not be novel or creative in any strong sense, but mere copying will not do. IceTV Pty Ltd v Nine Network Australia Pty Ltd (2009) 239 CLR 458¹ adds an important refinement: skill and labour spent gathering or compiling facts is not itself enough — what must be original is the particular expression, not the underlying factual content.

Automatic protection: no registration

Unlike patents and trade marks, copyright has no registration system in Australia. Protection arises automatically the moment an original work is recorded in a material form — written down, saved to a file, recorded, filmed — provided the usual connecting factors (an Australian author, or first publication in Australia) are satisfied. There is no application, no examination, no register to search, and no fee. The familiar © symbol is a convenient notice, not a precondition of protection.

The bundle of exclusive rights

Copyright is best understood as a bundle of exclusive rights (s 31), each of which the owner can exercise, license or assign separately.³ For a literary work, these typically include the right to reproduce the work in a material form, to publish it, to perform it in public, to communicate it to the public (which extends to broadcasting and making it available online), and to make an adaptation of it. Infringement occurs where someone exercises one of these rights without the owner's permission, in relation to the whole work or a substantial part of it. These rights generally endure for a lengthy statutory term measured from the life of the author, well beyond the author's death, before the work enters the public domain.

Fair dealing: a narrow set of exceptions

Fair dealing is a conceptual introduction only, but an important one: Australian law permits certain uses of copyright material, without the owner's permission, for defined purposes — research or study, criticism or review, parody or satire, reporting the news, and giving legal advice, among others. Each exception is a closed category, and within it the use must still be fair, having regard to matters such as the purpose and character of the use and the amount used. Fair dealing is narrower than the open-ended "fair use" doctrine found in some other countries; a use that seems reasonable in a general sense will not qualify unless it fits one of the recognised purposes and is fair within it.

A single national statute: no state variation

Intellectual property law is one of the cleanest examples of exclusive national uniformity in the Australian federation. The Constitution gives the Commonwealth Parliament a specific, exclusive head of legislative power over copyrights, patents and trade marks, in section 51(xviii).² Every right discussed in this module — copyright, patents, trade marks and registered designs — is therefore governed by a single Commonwealth statute applying identically across the country. There is no state-by-state variation to navigate here at all: contrast this with property law's Torrens title system, which genuinely differs from state to state, or with corporate law's national uniformity, which was achieved later and by a different constitutional route — a referral of state powers to the Commonwealth, rather than a direct constitutional grant from the outset.

Applying this in a problem question

1. Ask whether the problem concerns an idea or fact, which is not protectable, or a particular original expression of it, which may be.
2. Confirm subsistence: identify the category of work or subject matter, and check originality and the connecting factor — remembering there is no registration step to satisfy.
3. Identify which exclusive right is said to have been infringed, and who currently owns it (the author may not be the owner, particularly in an employment context).
4. Consider whether a fair dealing exception might apply, testing its specific purpose and fairness rather than assuming any beneficial use qualifies.
5. Note that no state-by-state jurisdictional analysis is needed: the Copyright Act 1968 (Cth) applies uniformly across every Australian jurisdiction.