On The Subject Of Copyright Of The Folk Literature And Art Works

In the 1950s, the legal protection movements of folk literature and art works occurred around the world. At that time, some developing countries in Africa, South America carried on various domestic legislation movements, and then requested to establish an international legal protection mechanism in order to resist to the illicit exploitation. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization and the World Intellectual property Organization have done many constructive efforts in the promotion of the legal protection level of works of folk literature and art, and they have passed successively "Tunis Model Law on Copyright for Developing Countries" and "Model Provisions for National Laws on the Protection of Expressions of Folklore against Illicit Exploitation and other Prejudicial Actions". So far, more than 40 countries in the world provide the legal protection for fork literature and art works in their copyright law or the regional copyright treaties. The protection of folklore is an unresolved issue in copyright law. In the past few years, however, the copyright law of the works of folk literature and art is incomplete, which causes disputes over many issues, among which the focus is on the subject of copyright. Take this fact into consideration, this essay analyzes the subject of copyright of the works of folk literature and art, and considers ownership as a system with the inheritor as main, the source group as supplement.Except the introduction and conclusion, the dissertation of this thesis is divided into four parts.The first part analyses the significance and meaning of protection of the works of folk literature and art. My view is that protecting the works of folk literature and art is not only the right of the author, but also the right as well as the duty of the government, the related communities and any other persons or organizations.The second part analyzes the origin and development of the works of folk literature and art. In my view, the copyright of the woks of literature and art is in itself not different from the common works. However facing the current situation when the inheritor can not be identified, there should be a sui generis subject of right of works of folk literature and art.The third part discusses how to identify the subject of the works of folk literature and art, meanwhile suggests that paying public domain to be used in the protection of the copyright of the folk literature and art works.The last part analyzes the litigation of protection of folk literature and art works in copyright law, try to apply commonweal litigation system to the protection of folk literature and art works in copyright law.