Examples of copyright-protected works include:
- Original literary and artistic works.
- Books, pamphlets, articles, and other writings.
- Periodicals and newspapers.
- Lectures, sermons, addresses, dissertations prepared for oral delivery, whether or not reduced to writing or other material form.
- Letters.
- Dramatic or dramatico-musical compositions; graphic works or entertainment in dumb shows.
- Musical compositions, with or without words.
- Works of drawing, painting, architecture, sculpture, engraving, lithography, or other works of art; models or designs for works of art. X’s painting of Madonna and Child is an example of an artistic work.
- Original ornamental designs or models for articles of manufacture, whether or not registrable as an industrial design, and other works of applied art. A stamped or marked container of goods can have an original ornamental design that is copyrightable.
- Illustrations, maps, plans, sketches, charts, and three-dimensional works relative to geography, topography, architecture, or science.
- Drawings or plastic works of a scientific or technical character.
- Photographic works including works produced by a process analogous to photography, lantern slides.
- Audiovisual works, cinematographic works, and works produced by a process analogous to cinematography or any process for making audiovisual recordings. Television news footage is an expression of news that can be copyrightable.
- Pictorial illustrations and advertisements.
- Computer programs.
- Other literary, scholarly, scientific, and artistic works.
- Derivative works such as dramatizations, translations, adaptations, abridgments, arrangements, and other alterations of literary or artistic works; and collections of literary, scholarly or artistic works, and compilations of data and other materials which are original by reason of the selection or coordination or arrangement of their contents.
- The typographical arrangement of a published edition of a work.
- Audio-visual recordings of each episode of a show.
- Sketches/drawings (but not necessarily the useful article they depict, like hatch doors).
A musical composition is an intangible work of art protected by copyright, separate from its embodiment in sheet music or a sound recording.
Non-Copyrightable Works
Examples of non-copyrightable works include:
- Unprotected Subject Matter:
- Ideas, procedures, systems, methods of operation.
- Concepts, principles, discoveries.
- Mere data as such.
- News of the day and other miscellaneous facts having the character of mere items of press information.
- Official texts of a legislative, administrative, or legal nature, as well as any official translation thereof.
- Format of a show.
- Useful articles, such as hatch doors, unless they incorporate a design element that is physically or conceptually separable from the utilitarian aspects.
- Non-original works.
- The focus of copyright is on the usefulness of the artistic design, not its marketability; the central inquiry is whether the article is a work of art.
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