Copyright Works Relating to Animals

Abstract

Under copyright law, works that are entitled to be protected must be an initiative creation of a person, or the so-called the ‘Originality’ principle. However, there are other kinds of creative works that are initially done by animals such as a selfie picture taken by a monkey, picture drawn by elephants, the circus shows and etc. These works have problems whether they can be protected under copyright law or not. Thus, who takes responsibility as a creator and hold copyright? According to this comparative study on the protection of copyright between the United States and United Kingdom law, the study found that American law under the guideline of Copyright Office provides that a creative work shall be a work that is originally made only by a human-being. An animal cannot be a creator of copyright works. Likewise, the UK law provides that the copyright owner can only be a person8 or a human-being9. Nevertheless, Thailand’s Copyright Act B.E. 2537 (1994) does not state in any section that only a person can be a creator.10 In order to understand such problematic issues, this research will apply a comparative study method to the research and highlight three major legal principles relating to the copyright law. These are as follows: (1) The principles of the copyright protection on human-being’s works (2) The copyright protection of the creative works made by animals, and (3) The copyright protection of the collaborate creative works made by human-beings and animals, in which human-beings put more effort and sufficient perseverance into them.