Copyright registration in the Bahamas. The Bahamas is a country within the Lucayan Archipelago of the West Indies in the Atlantic. By terms of GDP per capita, The Bahamas is one of the richest countries in the Americas. This economy has a very competitive tax regime. The Bahamas relies heavily on tourism to generate most of its economic activity. After tourism, the next most important economic sector is banking and offshore international financial services, accounting for some 15% of GDP. It was revealed in the Panama Papers that The Bahamas is the jurisdiction with the most offshore entities or companies in the world. 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 the Bahamas.
Copyright in the Bahamas
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the works are created in a certain material form, regardless of content, quality, form, medium, language, published or unpublished, registered or unregistered.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 the Bahamas
The Bahamas is a member country of The Berne Convention for Copyright since 1973.
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 the Bahamas is a contracting party of the Berne Convention, any work originating in the Bahamas will be given the same copyright protection in each of the Berne Convention member countries. The original from the Bahamas 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 the Bahamas ethnicity.
While in most countries, copyright protection is automatic as soon as the work existed in material form, copyright registration in the Bahamas 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 the Bahamas
To register for copyright protection in the Bahamas, 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 the Bahamas
Besides the Berne Convention, the Bahamas is also a signing party of the Universal Copyright Convention since 1976.
As of 2018 the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), an agency of the United Nations, listed the Copyright Act of 1998 as the main copyright law enacted by the legislature of the Bahamas. WIPO holds the text of this law in their WIPO Lex database. A more recent version with revisions up to 2010 is held on the Bahamas Laws On-Line database managed by the Office of the Attorney-General & Ministry of Legal Affairs.
The list of Bahamas IP Firms can be found here.