Copyrights

Copyright is an intellectual property right. The person who owns the copyright (author, creator or the publisher) has the exclusive right to stop others from copying or reproducing his work. All books, magazines, plays, musical scores, sculptures, paintings, drawings, sound recordings, films, television and radio broadcasts, cable programs and computer programs are capable of enjoying copyright protection in Singapore.

If you photocopy, reproduce or make an adaptation of a copy of the owner's work without the owner's permission, you have infringed his copyright unless you copy under the following circumstances:

• You copy for the purpose of your own self-study or research: in this case, you may copy up to 5 pages for a work of 500 or fewer pages or up to 5% of a book if the book contains 500 or more pages.
• You copy by hand for the purpose of a course of education which you are undergoing: you may copy up to 100% of the work.
• You make a recording of television or sound broadcasts or cable programs for your private and domestic use.
• You copy a work after its copyright protection has expired: in the case of literary, dramatic, musical or artistic works, the duration of Singapore copyright protection is generally the lifetime of the author plus 70 years, after which the work is in the public domain.
• You own a genuine (that is, not pirated) copy of a computer program or an adaptation of a computer program and you make a reproduction of it as a back-up of the original.
• You read or recite an extract of reasonable length from a published literary or dramatic work, or an adaptation of such a work, in public or include it in a sound broadcast or television broadcast or cable programme for the purpose of criticism and review, and give sufficient acknowledgement of the work.

If you infringe or intend to infringe copyright, the owner of the copyright can apply for a court injunction against you to prevent you from committing any or any further infringing act and sue you for damages to compensate him for his loss.

The copyright owner can also seek an order to make you pay over the profits that you have made from the infringing act.

If you sell or hire out an infringing article you can be fined up to $10,000 for each infringing article, up to a total of $100,000 per charge, or to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 5 years, or to both a fine and imprisonment.

If you possess 5 or more infringing copies of any work, you are presumed to possess such copies for the purpose of sale. The court may also order you to hand over to the copyright owner all infringing copies of his work for disposal.

The court also has power to authorise the police to conduct searches on premises in which the court suspects infringing copies are kept.

All information contained on this page is valid and may be amended from time to time, at the Polytechnic’s sole discretion.