Cap. 415 Art. 4Qualification for copyright protection by virtue of authors.

(1) Copyright shall be conferred by this article on every work eligible for copyright of which the author or, in the case of a work of joint authorship, any of the joint authors, is, at the time when the work is made:

(a) an individual who is a citizen of, or is domiciled or permanently resident in Malta or in a State in which copyright is protected under an international agreement to which Malta is also a party;

(b) a body of persons or a commercial partnership constituted, established, registered and vested with legal personality under the laws of Malta or of a State in which copyright is protected under an international agreement to which Malta is also a party.

(2) The terms of copyright protection conferred by this article shall be calculated according to the following table: TABLE

Type of Work Date of Expiration of Copyright

(i) Literary, musical Seventy years after the end of the or artistic works and year in which the author dies, database irrespective of the date when the work is lawfully made available to the public. (ii)Audiovisual works Seventy years after the end of the year in which the last of the following person dies: the principal director, the author of the screenplay, the author of the dialogue and the composer of music specifically created for use in the audiovisual work.

(3) In the case of an anonymous or pseudonymous literary, musical or artistic work, or in the case of a collective work, the copyright in the work subsists until the end of the expiration of 70 years from the end of the year in which it was lawfully made available to the public or after the end of the year in which the work was made if it has not been made available to the public:

Provided that when the pseudonym adopted by the author leaves no doubt as to his identity or in the event of the identity of the author becoming known during the period referred to in the preceding paragraph of this sub-article or where in the case of collective works by a body of persons the natural persons who have created the work are individually identifiable in the versions of the work made available to the public the terms of copyright protection shall be calculated in accordance with the provision of paragraph

(i) of the last preceding sub-article.

(4) In the case of joint authorship reference in the preceding table to the death of the author shall be deemed to refer to the joint author who dies last, whether or not he is a qualified person in terms of article 4(1).

(5) In the case of a person who for the first time lawfully publishes or lawfully communicates to the public a previously unpublished work the copyright protection of which has expired, he shall benefit from a protection equivalent to the economic rights covered by copyright but limitedly for a period of twenty-five years from the time when the work was first lawfully published or lawfully communicated to the public.

(6) Where a work is published in volumes, parts, instalments, issues or episodes and the term of protection runs from the time when the work was lawfully made available to the public, the term of protection shall run for each such item separately.