The following key terms form the substance of copyrights under the Cameroon intellectual property landscape:
- Work: Means any literary or artistic creation within the meaning of law.
- Audiovisual work: Means a work consisting of a series of related images giving an impression of movement, whether or not accompanied by sounds, and if accompanied by sounds, capable of being heard.
- Work of applied art: Means a two-dimensional or three-dimensional artistic creation having a utilitarian function or embodied in a utilitarian article, whether a work of handicraft or a work produced by industrial processes.
- Work of Joint authorship: Means a work in which creation two or more authors have collaborated.
- Collective work: Means a work created at the initiative of a natural or legal person who discloses it under his direction and name and in which the individual contributions of the various authors participating in its creation merge in the whole for which it was created so that it is possible to attribute to each of them a separate right in the whole work once completed.
- Composite work: Means a new work in which a pre-existing work is incorporated without the collaboration of the author of the latter.
- Author: Means the natural person who has created a work etc.
SCOPE OF APPLICATION OF THE COPYRIGHT LAW UNDER THE INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY LANDSCAPE OF CAMEROON
The copyright law under the intellectual property landscape of Cameroon shall apply:
- To works of which the author or any other original holder of copyright is a national of one of the member states of the organization or has his habitual residence or headquarters in such state;
- To audio-visual works of which the producer is a national of one of the member states of the organization or has his habitual residence or his headquarters in such state;
- To works published for the first time on the territory of one of the member states of the organization or published for the first time in a foreign country and also published in one of the member states of the organization within a period of 30 days;
- To works of architecture erected in one of the member states of the organization.