Copyright registration in Brazil. Brazil, officially the Federative Republic of Brazil, is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. Brazil is one of the world’s most multicultural and ethnically diverse nations, due to over a century of mass immigration from around the world. It is a regional and middle power, and an emerging power. Brazil is classified as an upper-middle-income economy by the World Bank and a newly industrialized country, with the largest share of global wealth in South America. It is considered an advanced emerging economy, having the twelfth largest GDP in the world by nominal, and eighth by PPP measures. 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 Brazil.
Copyright in Brazil
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the works are created in a certain material form, regardless of content, quality, form, medium, language, published or unpublished, registered or unregistered.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 Brazil
Brazil is a member country of The Berne Convention for Copyright since 1922.
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 Brazil is a contracting party of the Berne Convention, any work originating in Brazil will be given the same copyright protection in each of the Berne Convention member countries. The original from Brazil 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 Brazil ethnicity.
While in most countries, copyright protection is automatic as soon as the work existed in material form, copyright registration in Brazil 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 Brazil
To register for copyright protection in Brazil, 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 Brazil
Besides the Berne Convention, Brazil has also ascended to the Buenos Aires Convention in 1915, the Universal Copyright Convention in 1960, and the TRIPS Agreement in 1995, the Marrakesh VIP Treaty in 2018.
The copyright law of Brazil is primarily based on Law Nº9,610 from 19 February 1998.
Brazil’s first constitution, the Imperial Constitution of 1824, did not deal with creative works, and instead only mentioned patents – another important form of IP assets.
The first legal document to deal with the protection of creative works in Brazil was the Law of 11 August 1827, which gave jurist course professors exclusive publication rights to their course’s compendia for the 10 years following their approval by the government.
Now, a work in Brazil is protected for the rest of the author’s lifespan plus 70 years after their death.
You can see a list of Brazil IP firms here.