Copyright covers many different types of creatively produced products: from software to sheet music, pop art to pamphlets and data charts to jewellery.

In short it applies to all works of literature, music, art, drama and various other mass communication media - and, in addition, any combination thereof as well!

To gain copyright two simple criteria must be met:

• Firstly, the work must be original i.e. not copied word for word or blow by blow from somewhere, something or somebody else
• Secondly, the idea must be expressed in a suitable and permanent medium i.e. assembled into a book or home-study course, painted in a picture, captured on film or video, stored on a computer disk, recorded on a tape or CD, written onto paper or fashioned from a cloth, mineral or metal etc.

Now, here's what copyright DOES NOT cover:

• Any idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery - regardless of the form in which it is described, explained, illustrated, or embodied - in an original work

So, you can get an idea from somebody else's work, and use it to create a new and original work of your own. Remember, there is no copyright on the idea itself, just its form of expression.

So it follows that (on the other hand), if you took some or all of the author's words and copied them into your own work (word for word or even if you just changed a few, here and there) you would not gain copyright on those words...

...In fact, unless you had permission to do so, it would infringe the original author's copyright and you could get taken to court!

An old saying, various versions of which, is often heard quoted (especially by academics) is as follows:

'Copy one person's work and it's plagiarism -
combine five people's work and it's research!'

And when we say combine, we mean: 'take an idea from one person, a concept from another and a system from somewhere else etc. and make something new and unique from all of the pieces'.

We do not mean to say that you can happily: 'cut chunks out of several people's work and paste them all unaltered, un-adapted or without any change etc. into your work and then proceed to publish it as all yours'. That, again, is copyright theft...