Will Ownership of Copyrights be over after the Death of Creator?
In accordance to Article 1 point 1 of Indonesian Copyrights Law No. 28 of 2014 (hereinafter Copyrights Law), Copyright means exclusive rights of Creator that automatically arises based on declarative principle after a creation is embodied in a tangible form without reducing restriction according to Indonesian Law.
The meaning of creation is a creation in the field of science, art, and produced literature from inspiration, ability, thought, imagination, dexterity, skill, or expressed expertise in a tangible form. Article 40 of Copyrights Law explains in detail the protected creation by copyrights, which a song is one of protected creations by Copyrights.
Please be advised that owning Copyrights, the Creator and/or the Owner of Copyrights have fully rights and exclusive rights of the protected creation, and also the Creator and/or the Owner of Copyrights have fully rights to enforce their rights by allowing and/or prohibiting other parties who deliberately or not using and taking advantage of the creation. The included term of using copyrights without rights is an action to copy, distribute, disseminate and using the creation for commercial purposes.
Further, will ownership of copyrights be over after the death of creator? In accordance to Article 19 of Copyrights Law asserted that “Copyright owned by the Creator who has not been, has been or is not announced, distributed, or communicated after the Creator passed away belongs to the heirs or the recipient testament”. Based on the said provision, the heirs are also owning fully and exclusive rights to enforce their rights included to permit and/or prohibit other parties in using or taking advantage of the creation.
This action is taken by the daughters of Tommy Petty who was an American Rocker and passed away on October 2, 2017. As the first step, they sent a warning letter to Donald Trump for the without right use of “I Won’t Back Down” song for campaign purposes. Even though the use of “I Won’t Back Down” song by Donald Trump is only for campaign purposes and not for commercial purposes, the use of it still can be categorized as copyright infringement, remembering they are the legitimate heirs who have exclusive rights of the song and may give a permission and/or prohibition to other parties in using the song.