Documenting the date of creation

The easiest way to ensure your work isnt used by somebody else is to send your work to yourself by recorded, postdated delivery and keep the package sealed once you receive it. This isn't an official copyright but simply a way to prove that you owned the original piece at a certain point in time in case an ownership issue is taken to court.

Copyright and Photography

If you would like to commission a photographer to take pictures of your work, you need to clearly specify who owns the rights to the image beforehand. By default the photographer owns the copyright to any picture they take although they need your permission to reproduce it if the sole subject is your work, the exception to this is if the subject is something else and your work happens to be in the photograph.

International Copyright Law

The laws of the country apply when using copyrighted items as each have their own patent office, for example Cadburys chocolate have copyrighted the purple colour of their packaging, but cannot use it in Australia as another chocolate company uses a similar colour for theirs

Areas of copyright

There are four main areas of intellectual property rights:

Copyright For Material

Literary and artistic material, music, films, sound recordings and broadcasts, software and multimedia

Design Rights

You can have registered and unregistered design rights for designs and drawings

Trademarks

If a product is similar to another they can be confused. For example if an inferior product imitates a quality one with similar packaging, or a company uses a similar colour scheme or logo (see Orange vs EasyJet case)

Patents

Protects a physical invention