Copyright Protection under Jordanian Law: Moral and Economic Rights and the Means of Confronting Infringement

Many authors, designers, software developers and business owners in Jordan discover that their works have been copied, republished or commercially exploited without permission, after the right time to preserve the evidence has already passed. The Copyright and Neighboring Rights Protection Law No. 22 of 1992 and its amendments established a framework for protecting literary, artistic and scientific creations, regulating the moral and economic rights attached to a work, alongside the rights of performers, producers of sound recordings and radio and television broadcasting organizations. However, the distance between a right existing in the text and the ability to enforce it in court is measured by the quality of the documentation that preceded the dispute, and because the law combines civil and criminal remedies, assessing any act of infringement has become as much a question of choosing a path as a question of proving a right.

1. What Is Meant by Copyright and the Works Covered by Protection

The author is the person who created or devised the work, and a work includes every literary, artistic or scientific creation that meets the conditions for legal protection. Protection covers in particular:

• Books, booklets and written works.
• Lectures, speeches and sermons.
• Dramatic and musical works.
• Cinematographic and audiovisual works.
• Drawing, photography, sculpture, engraving, architecture and applied arts.
• Maps, designs and plans.
• Computer programs, whether in source code or machine code.
• Original works, collections, encyclopedias and anthologies where their selection or arrangement has an original character.

Protection also extends to the title of a work where it is original, but does not cover a common term used to indicate the subject of the work.

The governing criterion is the presence of originality in the expression itself, not the artistic value of the work or its size; an abstract idea or general information cannot be monopolized by anyone. This is why the lawyer begins with the question of whether the subject of the claim is a work that meets the conditions for protection in the first place, because the answer alone may move the case into a dispute of a different kind, as where the subject of the claim is a name or logo that distinguishes a product or a business, which is then examined under the framework of trademark infringement in Jordan.

2. The Author's Moral Rights

The law grants the author a set of moral rights of a special nature, the most prominent of which are:

1. The right to have the work attributed to its author and to have their name stated on the copies produced.
2. The right to decide on publication of the work and to determine the manner and timing of publication.
3. The right to modify the work by revision, deletion, addition or alteration.
4. The right to object to any infringement of the work, its distortion or mutilation, or any modification that would harm the author's reputation and honor.
5. The right to withdraw the work from circulation where there are serious and legitimate reasons, subject to fair compensation for the holder of the economic right.

These rights are distinguished by the fact that they cannot be disposed of or waived, in accordance with the provisions of the law. This characteristic has a practical effect that is overlooked when contracting: an entity that has bought the rights to exploit a work has not bought with them the right to remove its author's name or distort its content. One of the points a specialist lawyer raises when reviewing publishing contracts is whether the wording of the transfer extended to rights that cannot be waived.

3. The Author's Economic Rights

The author or their successor enjoys exclusive economic rights over the work, and no third party may exercise these rights without obtaining written permission from the right holder. The most prominent of them are:

• Reproducing the work in any manner or form.
• Translating the work into another language.
• Adapting, modifying or musically arranging the work.
• Renting out lawful copies in the cases permitted by law.
• Distributing the work or its copies by sale or any other transfer of ownership.
• Importing copies of the work in commercial quantities.
• Communicating the work to the public by recitation, display, performance, broadcast or other means.

A disposal of economic rights must be in writing and clearly specified, stating the right being disposed of, its scope, its purpose, and the duration and place of exploitation. This requirement is the source of most of the disputes in this area that reach the courts: a contract drafted in general terms granting "the right to publish" without specifying the medium, the duration or the geographical scope, after which the parties disagree over whether the license covers the electronic edition, the translation or exploitation outside the Kingdom. Drafting these contracts is work that comes before the dispute and cannot be fixed after it.

The following table sets out the essential differences between the moral and economic aspects, as the two are frequently confused:

Point of comparison	Moral rights	Economic rights
Subject of protection	The author's connection to the work, their name and the integrity of its content	The economic exploitation of the work in its various forms
Waivability and transferability	Cannot be disposed of or waived, in accordance with the provisions of the law	Can be disposed of and transferred by a written disposal specifying content, duration and place
Duration	Not measured by the period of economic exploitation; they remain protected in accordance with the provisions of the law	The author's lifetime and fifty years after their death in general, with special provisions for certain types of works
Effect of infringement	Harm to the attribution of the work to its creator, to their reputation and to the integrity of the work	Economic loss and profits made by the infringer without right
Who can invoke them	The author, and whoever stands in their place in defending this connection	The author, or whoever acquired the economic rights by a legal disposal or by inheritance
Typical form of claim	Stopping and removing the infringement and restoring attribution of the work to its creator	Compensation and claiming the proceeds of unlawful exploitation

4. Protection of Works in the Digital Environment

Copyright protection is no longer limited to works on paper; the law covers reproduction, electronic storage and communication to the public, and regulates protection relating to effective technological measures used to prevent or restrict unlicensed use of works.

The practical difference between the paper and digital environments does not lie in the right itself, but in how quickly the evidence disappears. A page is deleted, a post is edited or a file is replaced within hours, and with it goes the circumstantial evidence that would have decided the dispute. This is why the lawyer's work in these files begins with fixing the current state of affairs before any other step.

5. Exceptions and Permitted Uses

The law does not make every form of use of works subject to the author's consent; it allows, in specific cases, the use of published works without permission, within two conditions without which the exception cannot stand: that the use does not conflict with the normal exploitation of the work, and that it does not cause unjustified harm to the legitimate interests of the right holder. These cases revolve, overall, around educational and cultural contexts, personal use within the limits set by law, and quoting parts of the work for purposes of explanation or criticism. In the cases specified by the law, the source of the work and the name of its author must be stated.

The most frequent mistake here is treating these exceptions as a general license. Describing a use as "educational", "personal" or "limited quotation" does not in itself create the exception, because the matter is a legal assessment based on the amount taken, its place within the work and its effect on the market for the original work. Prevailing custom in a given field does not rise to the level of a legal exception. A decision to publish or quote should not be built on a general impression that the use is lawful; determining where a particular use falls within these limits is one of the questions the lawyer settles after examining the work and the use together.

6. The Term of Copyright Protection

The term of protection varies according to the nature of the work and the status of the right holder. In general, protection of the author's economic rights lasts throughout their lifetime and for fifty years after their death. Alongside this rule, the law sets out special provisions for certain types of works, including those whose right holder is a legal person, cinematographic and television works, anonymous works or works published under a pseudonym, and works of applied art. When the term of protection expires, the work passes into the public domain in accordance with the conditions set by law.

Practical note: The point from which the term starts to run differs according to the type of work and the status of the right holder, and it cannot be derived from the general rule alone. This is why the lawyer reviews the specific provision applicable to the type of work before building any contractual or litigation position on it, and it is a point on which circulated information should not be relied upon without reviewing the provision in force or consulting a specialist lawyer.

7. Legal Protection Against Copyright Infringement

The law gives the right holder effective means of confronting infringement before filing a lawsuit and while it is being heard. Among the measures whose applicability to the file the lawyer examines:

• Stopping the infringement of the work.
• Seizing unlawful copies.
• Seizing the materials and tools used in unlawful reproduction.
• Seizing invoices and documents relating to the violation.
• Seizing the proceeds of unlawful exploitation.
• Precautionary attachment of the infringer's assets in accordance with the legal conditions.
• Destroying unlawful copies, altering their features or rendering them unusable.
• Restoring the situation to what it was.
• Fair compensation for the damage resulting from the infringement.
• Publishing the court judgment at the expense of the convicted party in the cases permitted by law.

The law also permits urgent precautionary measures in cases that call for them. Choosing the appropriate measure and the timing of the request varies according to the nature of the work, the form of exploitation, the extent of the damage and the evidence available, which is itself a legal point that merits consultation before any action is initiated, because a request submitted on an incomplete basis may alert the other party and push them to conceal the evidence.

8. Criminal Liability

Copyright protection is not limited to civil remedies; the law imposes criminal liability for certain forms of infringement. The law punishes, according to its conditions, anyone who without legal basis exercises certain protected rights, or who displays, sells, circulates, rents out, broadcasts to the public or uses unlawful works to obtain a material benefit while knowing they are unlawful. The penalty is heavier in the case of repeat commission of certain offenses, and the court may, in the cases specified by law, take additional measures against the establishment in which the violation was committed.

The existence of two parallel paths makes the order between them a matter of judgment, since each path has its own evidentiary requirements and its own effect on the chances of settlement. One of the mistakes that weakens a position before it begins is sending formal notices to the infringing party before the evidence has been secured, so no correspondence should be sent on this matter before the file has been presented to a specialist lawyer.

9. Forms of Electronic Infringement of Works

With the expansion of digital use, the forms of infringement of works have multiplied, including:

• Copying books and articles and publishing them electronically without permission.
• Republishing images, designs and visual content without the right holder's consent.
• Using protected programs or works unlawfully.
• Uploading or distributing protected works through websites and digital platforms.
• Removing or disabling the technological protection measures of works.
• Exploiting works to make commercial profits without obtaining the necessary license.

Dealing with these cases requires determining the nature of the work, the right infringed, the method of exploitation and the evidence available. Some of these forms may overlap with other provisions of the Jordanian legislative system, including those relating to cybercrime under Jordanian law where the act takes place over the network, and the lawyer determines the most accurate legal description before initiating any path.

10. The Importance of Deposit and Proving Attribution of the Work

The law regulates the procedures for depositing published or printed works and requires deposit in the cases it specifies, and the work is given a deposit number for indexing and classification purposes. Failure to deposit a work does not in itself prejudice the author's rights established under the law.

This point is wrongly read as meaning that documentation is unnecessary. Protection arises as soon as the work is created and does not depend on a formal procedure, but a dispute is not decided by the right alone; it is decided by what can be proven in court: who created the work, when, and what existed before the disputed copy appeared. These are questions of proof, not questions of right, and the difference between them is what separates a file that can be pursued from a file that stumbles at the first defense.

These means of proof are built before the dispute, not after it. Whoever did not put their affairs in order from the start discovers the need for evidence of the date of creation at the moment when it is hardest to produce, and remedying the gap later becomes longer and more costly than arranging it at the time.

11. Frequently Asked Questions

Does copyright protection arise without registration or deposit?

Yes, protection is tied to the creation of the work itself, and failure to deposit does not in itself prejudice the rights established by law. However, the absence of documentation moves the dispute from a question of right to a question of proof, which is a point the lawyer assesses after reviewing the file.

What is the practical difference between moral rights and economic rights?

Moral rights protect the author's connection to the work, their name and the integrity of its content, and they cannot be waived under the provisions of the law. Economic rights protect economic exploitation and can be transferred by a written disposal specifying content, duration and place.

Does protection cover computer programs and digital content?

Yes, the law treats computer programs as protected works, whether in source code or machine code, and protection also extends to reproduction, electronic storage and communication to the public.

Is stating the author's name enough to make republication lawful?

No. Stating the source and the author's name is required in the cases specified by law, but it does not replace permission where the use falls within the right holder's exclusive economic rights.

How long does protection of the author's economic rights last?

In general, it lasts throughout the author's lifetime and for fifty years after their death, with special provisions for certain types of works, and determining the term applicable to a particular work is a matter the lawyer reviews in the specific provision governing it.

Can a civil claim be combined with criminal prosecution?

The law provides two paths, civil and criminal, each with its own requirements. Determining whether the file allows the two to be combined or requires starting with one of them is one of the points the lawyer settles after studying the facts.

Does the law protect the title of a work?

Protection extends to the title of a work where it is original, and does not cover a common term used to indicate the subject of the work.

Legal Consultation

Copyright cases combine an economic aspect that affects the work's income and a personal aspect that affects the attribution of the work to its creator and their reputation, and it is difficult to separate the two when assessing damage. On the side of the person accused of infringement, relying on an impression that the use is covered by the exceptions may lead to civil and criminal liability at once, while on the side of the right holder, irreplaceable opportunities are lost when securing the evidence is delayed or correspondence is sent at the wrong time. For specialist legal consultation in corporate and intellectual property cases, or to read about related topics such as the role of a corporate lawyer in Jordan, civil compensation under Jordanian law and compensation for material damage in tort liability, you can contact Alabwini Law Firm.