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Copyrights and Related Rights

The Office of Intellectual Works at the Ministry of Economy is the competent body in relation to copyrights and related rights.

A person can present his ideas and register his works to receive a copyright certificate. Also, companies with communication licenses that practice importing and selling of intellectual works must register all intellectual works at the Office of Intellectual Works in order to verify its right to trade in these works.

In accordance with the Copyright Law, an intellectual work is “any innovative composition in the field of literature, art, or science of whatever kind or a manner of expressing it, its importance or its purpose.”

Expression could be in any of the following manners:

  1. Written works such as books, manuals, and articles.
  2. Computer programs, its applications, and databases.
  3. Lectures, speeches, and sermons.
  4. Plays, musicals, and silent plays.
  5. Musicals accompanied or not accompanied by words.
  6. Audio, visual, or audiovisual works.
  7. Architecture works and engineering designs.
  8. Drawings by lines or colors, sculptures, carvings, printing on rocks, fabrics, wood and metals and any similar works in the field of fine arts.
  9. Photographs and similar works.
  10. Applied and plastic art works.
  11. Illustrative pictures, geographic maps, sketch designs, related 3-dimensional works and other works.

Article 3 of the Copyright Law and Related Rights states that protection should not be applied to abstract ideas but instead to what results from them. Also, protection does not apply to procedures and methods of work, mathematical concepts, official documents such as provisions of law, regulations, and judgments, reports and news, and other works that are publicly owned. However, protection would apply to these groups in the case that there is innovation in collecting them, organizing them, or any other effort put into them.The author of the protected items enjoys rights guaranteed by law in appreciation for the efforts made in creating his works. These rights are divided into literary and financial rights.* Source: Ministry of Economy, Abu Dhabi Office, P.O.Box: 901, Telephone: 8001222