Legal Copyright

Codel for Copyright Protection

The Need

In a rapidly digitizing world, in which electronic communication is becoming the norm, owners of creative and artistic works are increasingly concerned about the protection of their copyright. The digital domain is now the material form where many creative ideas and concepts are given the essential expression that establishes copyright. However, in a digital environment, it is more difficult to control the dissemination and unlicenced copying of such material, and to be able to prove who created and owns the work.   

 

The Solution
Codel addresses this need. It delivers a trusted independent service that enables owners of copyright material in a digital form, to give the work a discrete identity (a unique codelmark) that Codel stores in perpetuity. This digital fingerprint can be used at any time in the future to prove the ownership, integrity and date of copyright claim of that work.

A great advantage of the Codel service is that, in comparison to the traditional “non-digital” method of claiming copyright (sending a physical copy of the work to yourself by Special Delivery in order to prove date of creation), Codel can handle very high volumes of digital copyright material. It can be integrated seamlessly into customers’ business processes, delivering a copyright protection service to such high volume producers as website businesses.

Codel also enables copyright owners to register their work in a central database, a facility that doesn’t exist at the moment; and to help prove when their work has been used unlicensed.

 

How Codel Works

The registered user simply calls the Codel service and requests a digital fingerprint (codelmark) to be created for a selected piece of data. The unique codelmark, which cannot be subverted, is stored by the user with the original data. Codel stores only a copy of the codelmark, not the original data, for future reference by the user.

When the data is then disseminated by the user to third parties, recipients can verify with Codel that the data is authentic and unchanged; who originated it; when it was created; and that it is the current version. Verifying codelmarked data can be done free of charge by anyone with access to the internet, and requires no software to be installed locally. 

 

The Benefits

The Codel service is a unique combination of simplicity and utility. It is an innovative, simple and easy-to-integrate solution for protecting copyright and empowering owners to discriminately share their creative and artistic works in order to generate licence revenue.

The very light touch of the service on individuals, organisations and ICT, and the rapid payback period, mean that the benefits of Codelmarking are within reach of everyone.

 

For general advice and background on Copyright issues, we recommend the following:

 



Previous page: Legal
Next page: Anti-Counterfeiting Legal Action