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CREATIVITY IN COPYRIGHT
Doubts often arise as to whether copyright may be asserted over a particular creation. In a recent legal interpretation, the Intellectual Property Office (IPO) pointed out that a work as referred to in the Copyright Act means a creation within a literary, scientific, artistic, or other intellectual domain. To be copyrightable, a creation must be one of the types of work listed in Article 5 of the Act, and must also satisfy the two essential criteria of originality and creativity. Originality means that the work is the creation of the author himself (and not plagiarized from the creation of another person). Creativity means that the work must show a certain level of creativity.
As for what the required level of creativity may be, in judicial practice to date the opinions expressed and the decisions handed down have varied considerably. The IPO stated in its ruling that the level of creativity required is the "minimal requirement of creativity" (a.k.a. the principle of aesthetic non-discrimination), which must be determined case by case.
The IPO's interpretation further notes that graphical works are one of the types of work enumerated in Article 5 of the Copyright Act, and are defined as creative works employing drafting techniques such as form and line, characterized by intellectual or technical expression, and expressing thoughts and emotions; they include maps, charts, scientific, technical, and engineering design drawings, and other pictorial and graphical works. But the manufacture of a three-dimensional object according to the concepts expressed in a graphical work, by working according to the dimensions, specifications, or structural drawings expressed in the work, is an act of putting into practice, and is not the subject of protection under the Copyright Act.
For example, if a circuit diagram for a camera is a scientific, technical, or engineering design drawing, and has originality and creativity, then it is a graphical work protectable under the Copyright Act, and is protected from the time when it is completed. But if text marked on the circuit diagram merely comprises various designations, and is not the expression of thoughts or emotions, then it cannot receive protection under the Act. As for the camera itself, it is an industrial product, not a work as referred to in the Act, and thus does not fall within the scope protected under the Act.