What a page posts is someone’s copyright
business.gov.au’s list of what copyright protects includes visual images, music, sound recordings and moving images. Those four cover almost everything a business page posts, so the question for any photo, clip or tune is a practical one: who made it, and on what terms.
A week of posts, worked through
An example, written for this guide
A small bakery posts three times in one week. The bakery and its posts are invented; the rules beside them are not.
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Monday
A photo of the new window display, taken by a staff member during a shift.
IP Australia says employers own the IP their employees create in relation to the business, and that any departure from that rule only binds if it is written into the employment contract. If taking the photo was part of the job, it falls on the bakery’s side of that line unless the contract says otherwise.
The person in the photo is a separate matter. eSafety’s guidance for employers is to get a worker’s informed consent before their full name, photo, video or other details go online.
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Wednesday
The new logo, drawn by a freelance designer, posted as the page’s profile picture.
Here the default runs the other way. Unless the contract says something different, IP Australia says what a contractor creates is the contractor’s. It gives logos as an example of what contractors are hired to make.
Its advice is a written contract signed before work starts, which clearly defines:
- who owns the IP the contractor creates
- who has the right to use it commercially
- if, and when, ownership will transfer
- whether either party can improve or modify it, and whether that affects ownership.
A logo can also be a registered trade mark. IP Australia says a trade mark can protect a logo, word, phrase, sound or picture, among other things, and helps customers tell your goods and services apart from competitors’. Trade marks are registered with IP Australia; copyright is not.
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Friday
A short video of the morning bake, with a well-known song playing behind it.
A song on a recording carries more than one layer of copyright. The Attorney-General’s Department lists musical works (compositions or arrangements) among the works copyright protects, and song lyrics among literary works. Sound recordings are protected separately.
Owners often grant permission for some uses up front, in an end user licensing agreement or terms of use, so the department suggests checking those first to see whether your use is already covered. For music beyond that, two of the main collecting societies it names are the Australian Performing Rights Association and Australasian Mechanical Copyright Society (APRA AMCOS) and the Phonographic Performance Company of Australia (PPCA). Collecting societies can grant permission for certain uses of material in their collections.
Three posts, three different answers: the bakery likely owns Monday’s photo, the designer owns Wednesday’s logo unless the contract moved it, and Friday’s song belongs to people outside the business entirely.
When someone else uses yours
The same rules protect what the business makes. For infringement on an online site, IP Australia says you can approach the site’s owners and ask them to take the content down, and that most e-commerce platforms have a take-down mechanism for IP complaints.
It also gives a caution worth reading twice: if you accuse someone of infringing your IP without grounds, you can end up liable for damages. Before asking for something to come down, IP Australia suggests asking what the IP is worth, who you believe is infringing, and what evidence you have.
If the copy is a whole fake version of your page rather than one borrowed photo, that is impersonation, and card 5 covers what Scamwatch says to do.