The tax and duty implications of copyright are significant and include:
- what is copyright? What can copyright be created in? How does copyright differ from a trade mark, a patent or an industrial design?
- how do you distinguish and apportion, for tax and accounting purposes, between the various species of intellectual property (copyright, trade mark, patent, industrial design and goodwill)? Can goodwill be severed from a trade mark?
- what are the tax consequences of copyright improvements? Will the act of rewriting computer code (ie recoding software in a different language) result in a new tax asset?
- what are the tax implications of losing copyright? For example, what happens if a copyright is used industrially or a patent is obtained in respect of copyright material (the 'overlap' issue)?
These issues are explored in some detail in the case studies.