Faculty of EMS Postgraduate guide: Copyrights

During the course of your studies, you may sometimes want to copy material, e.g. journal articles, web pages, maps etc. You need to be aware that this material will almost certainly be protected by copyright, which will limit the amount you can copy.

•             A single extract or several extracts from a book as long as the total copied is not more than 10% of the whole work, OR

•             one chapter from a book, OR

•             one article from a journal or newspaper issue, OR

•             one paper from a set of conference proceedings, OR

•             one single case from a volume of law reports, OR

•             Poems, short stories and other short literary works may be copied so long as they are not more than ten pages long.   

•             You may select an area of a map not greater than A4 in size and copy it up to four times for private study or research for a non-commercial purpose.

Copyrights means: the exclusive legal right to reproduce, publish, sell, or distribute the matter and form of something (such as a literary, musical, or artistic work) Copyrights | Definition of Copyrights by Merriam-Webster

Copyright Laws in South Africa are governed by the Copyright Act of 1978 and its amendments. CIPC and DTI oversee copyright in the country. As a member of the Berne Convention and TRIPS Agreement, copyright works protected in South Africa are also protected in other member states of the above. One doesn’t have to register copyright on a work for it to be protected. Copyright is automatically assigned the moment an original creative work takes a tangible form. Copyright apply to works that have some form of creativity embedded. As such a mere list of facts or data cannot be copyright protected. A grocery list for instance, is not a creative act and thus cannot be protected.

Credit: Copyright Law in South Africa - Copyright Attorneys (svw.co.za)