Originality and reduction to material form

• Section 2 of the Copyright Act provides that the works listed in the section will be eligible for copyright if they are ‘original’. For further information on works elegible for copyright, please click here. There is no definition of ‘original’ in the Act, but the highest South African court, the Supreme Court of Appeal, took into account in determining the originality of an artistic work, such factors as that the work is ‘a substantial improvement on what preceded it’ and that ‘a lot of skill, labour, effort and time were expended’ in creating the work.


• It is a generally accepted principle of copyright law that the concept of originality is not equivalent to novelty or uniqueness but should be understood to mean that the work emanated from the author and was created through the application of the author’s skill and creativity, labour and efforts.


• Apart from the requirement of originality, it is required that the work (with the exception of broadcasts and programme-carrying signals) must have been written down, recorded, represented as digital data or signals, or otherwise reduced to material form.  Prior to such reduction to material form, and whilst a work is still a mere idea in the mind of its author, no copyright comes into existence.