Intellectual property (2023): Neighboring rights

In copyright law, related rights (or neighboring rights) are the rights of a creative work not connected with the work's actual author. It is used in opposition to the term "authors' rights". Neighboring rights is a more literal translation of the original French droits voisins. Both authors' rights and related rights are copyrights in the sense of English or U.S. law.

Related rights vary much more widely in scope between different countries than authors' rights. The rights of performers, phonogram producers and broadcasting organizations are certainly covered, and are internationally protected by the Rome Convention for the Protection of Performers, Producers of Phonograms and Broadcasting Organisations signed in 1961.

Within the European Union, the rights of film producers (as opposed to directors) and database creators are also protected by related rights, and the term is sometimes extended to include the sui generis rights in semiconductor topologies and other industrial design rights. A practical definition is that related rights are copyright-type rights that are not covered by the Berne Convention.

International protection of related rights.

Apart from the Rome convention, a number of other treaties address the protection of related rights:

Convention for the Protection of Producers of Phonograms Against Unauthorized Duplication of Their Phonograms (Geneva Phonograms Convention, 1971).

Convention Relating to the Distribution of Programme–Carrying Signals Transmitted by Satellite (Brussels Convention, 1974).

Treaty on Intellectual Property in Respect of Integrated Circuits (IPIC Treaty, 1989).

Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS, 1994).

WIPO Performances and Phonograms Treaty (WPPT, 1996).

Apart from the TRIPS Agreement, these treaties cannot truly be described as global: the Rome Convention had 83 signatories as of 2006, compared with 162 for the Berne Convention.

Relation to authors' rights.

Related rights are independent of any authors' rights, as is made clear in the various treaties (Article 1 Rome; Article 7.1 Geneva; Article 1.2 WPPT). Hence a CD recording of a song is concurrently protected by four copyright-type rights:

Authors' rights of the composer of the music.

Authors' rights of the lyricist.

Performers' rights of the singer and musicians.

Producers' rights of the person or corporation that made the recording.