Hey, it’s Nancy here from soon-to-be world famous pop group Nancy and the Meerkats!
We finished writing our first song today and the meerkats gave Big Joe a demo to listen to!
I was just coming back from the shops when I heard Kitty Perry meowing our brand new tune in the street.
She must have been listening to our rehearsals and stolen the tune. I was gutted because everyone would think that it’s her song and not ours.
Big Joe had something up his enormous sleeve though. Copyright!
Behind the scenes Joe’s been finding out all about copyright. It’s kind of like a law that says “You can’t COPY, RIGHT?”. It protects many types of work, from music and lyrics to photographs and even knitting patterns.
Because our song is totally new and we’ve got it written down, it’s protected and the copyright belongs to us. And what’s more, it’s protected in lots of ways.
The tune’s protected because we had the sheet music written down. And Kitty Perry can’t steal the lyrics either because they’re also written down– the copyright for the words belongs to us too.
Copyright is just one way of making sure that people who’ve taken the time to make something original, don’t get cheated out of it. We own the copyright so Kitty Perry will have to stop being a copy cat!
Listen to this episode of Nancy and the Meerkats below…
Nancy and the Meerkats is supported by the Intellectual Property Office. Click here to find out more!