There is no official register for copyright. It is an unregistered right unlike patents, registered designs or trademarks. So, there is no official action to take, no application to make, forms to fill in or fees to pay.

Copyright comes into effect immediately, as soon as something that can be protected is created and “fixed” in some way, e.g. on paper, on film, via sound recording, as an electronic record on the internet, etc.

However, general rules of law provide certain possibilities that can be used to establish proof of authorship. The main possibilities are : registration of a document with a notary or at a registration office.

At the Benelux Office for Intellectual Property you can registrate your idea as an i-DEPOT.

It should be noted that the main and only advantage of registration at one of these instances is to create a fixed date of registration for the filed document.

Neither of these instances however shall examine whether the conditions of copyright protection are fulfilled, or whether the person that files the document is really the creator.

There is no (inter)national registration of copyrights. And as there are no obligatory formalities to fulfill, there are no costs.

For date registration at a notary you pay notary tariffs.

For more information about the costs for date registration via an i-DEPOT at the Benelux Office of Intellectual Property click here.