What does copyright protect?

Copyright is a type of legal protection for people who express ideas and information in certain forms. The most common forms are: writing, visual images, music and moving images.

For more information about what copyright protects, see our information sheet "Copyright in Australia: an introduction".

Copyright protects the form or way an idea or information is expressed, not the idea or information itself. For information about legal protection for ideas and concepts, see our information sheet "Ideas: Legal Protection".

How do you get copyright protection?

There is no system of registration for copyright protection in Australia.

You do not need to publish your work, to put a copyright notice on it, or to do anything else to be covered by copyright — the protection is free and automatic. There are no forms to fill in, and there are no fees to be paid. You do not have to send your work to us or to anyone else.

A work is protected automatically from the time it is first written down or recorded in some way, provided it has resulted from its creator’s skill and effort and is not simply copied from another work. For example, as soon as a poem is written, or a song is recorded, it is protected.

Australian copyright works are protected in most other countries, and copyright works from most other countries are protected in Australia.

For information about who owns copyright, see our information sheet "Ownership of Copyright".

The copyright notice

You do not need to put a "copyright notice" on your work for it to be protected in Australia. You may choose to put a copyright notice on your work to remind people that it is protected by copyright. You can put the notice on your work yourself; there is no formal procedure.

The notice is: © (or "Copyright") + copyright owner’s name + year of first publication —for example: © Gus O’Donnell 1968.

Source of copyright law

Copyright law comes from the Copyright Act and from court decisions.

More information

We also publish more detailed information in our Books.

You may also be interested in our training program.