Assessing the Originality of Works that are Subject of Meger Doctrine

Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

Professor, Law and Islamic Jurisprudence Department, Research Institute for Islamic Culture and Thought, Tehran, Iran- Associate member of Faculty of law, College of Farabi, University of Tehran, Qom, Iran.

10.22099/jls.2021.39133.4184

Abstract

According to Article 1 of the Law on Protection of the Rights of Authors, Writers and Artists (1348) the requisite of protection is that the work must be the result of creativity and initiative of the author. This issue, where the idea of the work has no way of being creative, so that expressing the idea is possible in limited ways, raises the question of whether in such cases the work Is protected by law or not? This issue has been highly debated in the U.S Copyright law and has been called the Merger doctrine. According to this doctrine, when there is only one way or limited ways to express the idea of the work, so that the idea imposes its expression, the issue protected by law is not realized; Because, in fact, the basic condition of protection, which is the originality-creation of the work by the author-has not been fulfilled.
The present article seeks to analyze the impact of the merger on the status of the originality of works by using a descriptive-analytical method in examining the judicial decisions issued in merger cases and concludes that this doctrine is also applicable in Iranian law; Also, the connection between the Merger doctrine and the fundamental condition of protection doubles the necessity for identifying and applying it in Iranian law.

Keywords

References

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Journal of Legal Studies
Volume 13, Issue 4 - Serial Number 42
December 2021
Pages 205-232

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