copyright intellectual-property us-supreme-court
Copyright rules are restricted
<p>Are Copyright rules enforced by the authorities currently only to written documents? Are there any regulations on &quot;mind reading&quot; and producing documents elsewhere? How correctly and usefully are the source and publishing office are connected and handled. Do the rules have country-wise variations?</p>

<h3>Are Copyright rules enforced by the authorities currently only to written documents?</h3>
<p>Copyright is not restricted to written documents. It applies to many kinds of works. In Canada, for example, this includes &quot;literary, dramatic, musical and artistic work&quot; and these include &quot;paintings, drawings, maps, charts, plans, photographs, engravings, sculptures, works of artistic craftsmanship, architectural works.&quot;</p>
<p>The scope varies from country to country, but for those parties to the Berne Convention, they will cover at least the following:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“literary and artistic works” shall include every production in the literary, scientific and artistic domain, whatever may be the mode or form of its expression, such as books, pamphlets and other writings; lectures, addresses, sermons and other works of the same nature; dramatic or dramatico-musical works; choreographic works and entertainments in dumb show; musical compositions with or without words; cinematographic works to which are assimilated works expressed by a process analogous to cinematography; works of drawing, painting, architecture, sculpture, engraving and lithography; photographic works to which are assimilated works expressed by a process analogous to photography; works of applied art; illustrations, maps, plans, sketches and three-dimensional works relative to geography, topography, architecture or science.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>But copyright does not apply to things that are not yet works. It does not protect ideas. It only protects particular expressions of ideas. So to the extent that a concept is only in someone's mind, it does not yet have copyright protection.</p>
<h3>Are there any regulations on &quot;mind reading&quot; and producing documents elsewhere?</h3>
<p>Copyright gives to the copyright holder an exclusive right to copy. Unauthorized copying of someone else's copyrighted work is infringement. Copying requires access to the source material, whether direct or indirect.</p>
<p>If a person A has perceived a work, and person B gets information about that work from person A in order to reproduce the work, the eventual reproduction would still be a potential infringement. This is true no matter <em>how</em> person B gets that information from person A.</p>
