The Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 received the Royal Assent on the 15th November 1988 and is the culmination of many years'consideration of reforms to this broad and increasingly important area of law. Much of the Act will come into force during 1989 and its impact will be felt in a wide range of industries and professions.
The Act takes account of the many recent advances in technology and introduces new provisions to cater for the protection of computer software and to address the problems of works generated by computers. Satellite broadcasting and cable programme services are specifically provided for.A new rental right is introduced for sound recordings, films and computer programs to deal with the problems caused by home taping.
The Act is not only concerned with problems created by the new technologies. It introduces new "moral rights" for authors, provides a new unregistered design right for industrial designs and confers new civil rights of action on performers and record companies to enable them to combat bootleggers and other illegal exploitation of performances.
The Act also establishes a Copyright Tribunal to deal with disputes about licensing schemes in areas such as reprography
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