Copyright registration in Belarus. Belarus, officially the Republic of Belarus, and historically Byelorussia, is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe. Belarus is a developing country, ranking 53rd in the Human Development Index. It has been a member of the United Nations since its founding and has joined the CIS, the CSTO, the EAEU, the OSCE, and the Non-Aligned Movement. It has shown no aspirations of joining the European Union but nevertheless maintains a bilateral relationship with the bloc and also participates in two EU projects, the Eastern Partnership, and the Baku Initiative. 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 Belarus.
Copyright in Belarus
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the works are created in a certain material form, regardless of content, quality, form, medium, language, published or unpublished, registered or unregistered.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 Belarus
Belarus is a member country of The Berne Convention for Copyright since 1997.
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 Belarus is a contracting party of the Berne Convention, any work originating in Belarus will be given the same copyright protection in each of the Berne Convention member countries. The original from Belarus can be that the work is made and published for the first time in this country or if the author of the work is of Belarus ethnicity.
While in most countries, copyright protection is automatic as soon as the work existed in material form, copyright registration in Belarus 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.
In some cases, they might not win as the burden of legal fees overwhelm them. There might be other reasons such as the pressure from the big organizations and the fact of time-consuming when pursuing the fight.
If the copyright owner has already registered for copyright protection to the IP office, they would get a strong foundation and legal claims even if those situations happen, increasing their chance of winning.
Documents for copyright registration in Belarus
To register for copyright protection in Belarus, the author of the work needs to prepare the following documents:
- Declaration of copyright registration;
- Two copies of copyrighted work;
- Documents proving the right to apply;
- Written consent of co-authors, if the work has co-authors;
- Written consent of the co-owners, if the copyright is jointly owned;
- Notarized identity card of the author or owner of the work;
- Power of Attorney, if the applicant is an authorized person;
- Notarized copy of the company’s business registration certificate (if the owner is a company).
The copyright law of Belarus
Copyright owners need to pay attention to the Law of the Republic of Belarus No. 262-Z of May 17, 2011.
According to this law, a work has 50 years of protection after the dead of the author or the last co-author of the work.
You can find a list of Belarus IP firms here.