Legal notes to copyright registration in Afghanistan

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Copyright registration in Afghanistan. Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central and South Asia. Recently, several small companies and factories began operating in different parts of Afghanistan, which not only provide revenues to the government but also create new jobs. Afghanistan is a member of WTO, SAARC, ECO, and OIC. It holds an observer status in SCO. In 2018, a majority of imports come from either Iran, China, Pakistan, and Kazakhstan, while 84% of exports are to Pakistan and India. In addition, the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan has also become an attractive destination for foreign businesses, including companies from post-Soviet countries. Accordingly, many businesses want to enter this market and one of the most important preparations a business needs to take before expanding to this country is to learn the procedure of copyright registration in Afghanistan.

Copyright in Afghanistan

Unlike other intellectual property rights such as trademarks, patents, industrial designs, plant varieties, etc., copyright does not need to be registered for protection but will be automatically protected from the time the works are created in a certain material form, regardless of content, quality, form, medium, language, published or unpublished, registered or unregistered.

Accordingly, whether registered or not, the copyright to the work will still be protected. However, copyright registration is still advised because early registration will give the author/owner of the work many advantages in the event of a dispute.

When unauthorized use of work occurs around the world, the owner of a work who has registered copyright in advance will not have to waste time and complicate matters with proving himself/herself to be the legitimate owner of the work.

Thereby, in order to avoid passivity, the owner of the work should make a copyright registration to protect their rights and interests when there is an infringement.

Copyright registration in Afghanistan

Afghanistan has 0 international copyright agreements and is a member country of The Berne Convention for Copyright.

The Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works (the Berne Convention) is an international agreement governing copyright. The agreement was first accepted in Berne, Switzerland, in 1886.

As Afghanistan is a contracting party of the Berne Convention, any work originating in Afghanistan will be given the same copyright protection in each of the Berne Convention member countries. The original from Afghanistan can be that the work is made and published for the first time in this country or if the author of the work is from Afghanistan ethnicity.

While in other countries copyright protection is automatic as soon as the work existed in material form, registering for copyright in Afghanistan is critical in order for the copyright owner to obtain evidence of copyright.

Evidence of copyright is extremely important even when copyright is obtained automatically.

When registering, the work – the subject matter of the application gets a date and a time stamp recorded, as well as information about the work and proof of work concept and development. This provides unambiguous proof of authorship and ownership that can’t be denied.

Proof of copyright is essential in an age when the publishing, dissemination, and theft of material is extremely easy with the exposure of the Internet.

If copyright registration is not made, copyright owners will lose a significantly big amount of money and time attempting to fight copyright issues and prove ownership of the original work.

Copyright matters of Afghanistan and the United States

As of 2005, Afghanistan had no official copyright ties with the US, hence works published in Afghanistan were not copyrighted in the US, and vice versa.

The US Department of Commerce and the Afghan Ministry of Commerce and Industry inked a cooperative agreement in October 2007 to establish a platform for economic cooperation, including intellectual property rights protection and enforcement.

Since joining the WTO in 2016, Afghanistan’s works have been automatically restored in the United States under 17 U.S.C Section 104A. For Afghanistan, the term of copyright is life plus 50 years for individual and joint works, and 50 years from the first publication for paintings, photographs, and audiovisual works.

This implies that works whose creators died before 1972 are not restored in the United States, as are paintings, photography, and audiovisual works released before 1972.

You can see a list of Afghanistan IP firms here.

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