Moral rights in UK law are a subset of copyright law that protect the personal and reputational interests of authors and creators in their works. These rights are distinct from the economic rights that allow the creator to control the use and distribution of their work for financial benefit. Under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 (CDPA), moral rights are primarily concerned with the respect and integrity of the work and the author’s association with it.
Moral rights were only fully recognised in the UK once the CDPA came into force in 1989, but they were already well established in other European jurisdictions.
Moral rights are one of the three principal forms of rights that are afforded by copyright (the other two being the proprietary or economic rights in the work; and the artist’s right to a royalty on the resale of her work).
In brief terms, moral rights give the author of a work (for example the principal director of the film or production), who may no longer be the owner of the copyright, some control over how the work is used or exploited in the future.
The principal protections afforded by moral rights include the right to identified as the author or director (known as the right to attribution, which must be asserted by the creator for it to take effect); and, crucially, the right to object to a derogatory treatment of the work that could harm their reputation or the integrity of the work, regardless of what has happened to the ownership of the copyright. Whilst the right applies automatically, what constitutes derogatory treatment is necessarily somewhat subjective and often depends on the context and nature of the alteration, although it might include, for example, any addition, deletion, alteration, or adaptation that distorts or mutilates the work.
Moral rights are generally long-lasting but are not perpetual. The right to be identified as the author or director, the right to object to derogatory treatment, and the right against false attribution last for the same duration as the economic rights in the work, which is typically the lifetime of the author plus 70 years. The right of privacy in photographs and films, however, persists only during the lifetime of the person who commissioned the work.
Moral rights are independent of the economic rights, which means that it is very important to maintain the distinction between the author of the work, and the owner of the copyright which subsists in that work. The moral rights stay with the author irrespective of subsequent ownership and dealings with the ownership of the copyright. Importantly, whilst they cannot be transferred to another party, however, they can be – and in practice often are – waived.
The principal purpose of moral rights is to recognise, in a legally enforceable way, that the author or creator of a work has a link or bond with that work which should be preserved regardless of hard economic considerations. So even if the copyright in a project is assigned, but then it comes to the creator’s attention that the content is being used horribly, in a derogatory way, that creator may still be able to seek redress, depending on the circumstances.
In those circumstances, the creator can seek remedies through the courts. Possible remedies include damages, injunctions to prevent further infringement, and orders for the correction of false attributions or removal of derogatory treatments.