‘Analyses of infringement of Moral Rights: Focus on memes and cinematographic films’ in India and USA.

Best Citation – Purnashri Das, ‘Analyses of infringement of Moral Rights: Focus on memes and cinematographic films’ in India and USA, 2 ILE IPCLR 7, 2022

ABSTRACT

This research work focusses on infringement of moral rights of an author when the work is used in memes and cinematographic film. Moral rights are different from copyright which includes the economic rights given to copyright holder. The author also cannot assign away the moral rights as these rights protect the author from distortion of his work as a work is a manifestation of personality of an author. For example JK Rowlings novels on Harry Potter. USA and India is taken for Comparison in context of moral rights provision in these two jurisdictions. USA is taken for comparison with India as in USA Moral Rights are provided to limited set of works, unlike India where there is no such restriction regarding the type of works entitled for moral rights. Further moral rights are subject to fair use doctrine in USA but there is no such relationship between moral rights and permitted acts in India. How moral rights can be related to memes and personality rights is seen in context of USA and India. When a still from a cinematographic film is used for a meme, would it affect the moral right of the producer is analysed. Lastly, moral rights in context of paternity right of a contributor in a film is analysed. Further how placing of credits in a film can affect the author’s moral right is analysed. Under the umbrella of moral rights, when an author work is showcased in a web-series, how it affect the right of integrity of the author is discussed.

Keywords: Moral Rights, USA, India, cinematographic films, memes, personality rights, Paternity right, Right of Integrity.