MALTA Law and Practice Contributed by: Paul Micallef Grimaud, Philip Formosa and Michela Zammit Lupi, Ganado Advocates
granting the owner the right to prevent extraction or reutilisation of substantial parts of the database. Industrial Designs and Copyright Industrial designs may be eligible for copyright protec - tion if (most particularly) they qualify as artistic works under the Copyright Act. “Artistic works” include “works of artistic craftsmanship” as a sub-category, and these are defined as including articles of indus - trial art. Industrial designs that are purely functional or dictated solely by technical requirements are gener - ally excluded from copyright protection, although they may still be protected through design rights. 3.2 Essential Elements of Copyright Protection Under Maltese law, a work must meet the following elements to be eligible for copyright. Originality The work must be original, meaning it reflects the author’s own intellectual creation. It does not need to be novel in the sense of patent law, but must arise from the author’s creative choices rather than being, for instance, purely functional or commonplace. Authorship Copyright arises for works authored by natural per - sons or, as to collective works, by two or more physi - cal persons at the initiative and direction of a physical or legal person. The author is generally the person who creates the work and the presumptive first owner of its copy - right. Economic rights conferred by copyright can be assigned or licensed to another party, both during and after the lifetime of the author. Fixation The work must be written down, recorded, fixed or
methods of operations or mathematical concepts as such. No Formalities Required Copyright protection is automatic upon creation; no registration is required. Proof of creation date and authorship can be important for enforcement or licensing. There are qualification requirements. Copyright pro - tection is qualified by whether the author (or joint authors) is at the time when the work was made a citizen of, or domiciled or resident in Malta, or else a citizen, domiciled or resident in another state in which copyright is protected under an international agree - The author is generally the natural person who creates the work. The person in such case must contribute original intellectual effort to the creation of the work. Mere mechanical contribution, execution of instruc - tions, or technical assistance, are generally deemed to be insufficient. Maltese law does not have the concept of works made for hire. Accordingly, if a consultant or independent contractor authored a work, that person would be the presumptive owner of its copyright, unless there is an agreement to the contrary. ment to which Malta is a party. 3.3 Copyright Authorship For works made in the course of employment, the employee who authored the work would be the pre - sumptive (first) owner of its copyright (subject to any agreements to the contrary). Exceptions exist for computer programs and databas - es made in the course of the author’s employment or execution of their duties. Their copyright is deemed to be automatically transferred to the employer, subject to any agreement excluding or limiting such transfer. Maltese law requires authorship by a natural person. Therefore, in the case of works created or generated by artificial intelligence (AI) tools, animals or other non-human agents, their authorship cannot generally be attributed to a natural person unless they provided
reduced to a material form. Protected Subject Matter
The work must generally be capable of classification under one of the categories of eligible works (ie, artis - tic works, literary works, musical works, etc). Copy - right protection does not extend to ideas, procedures,
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