For most of us, “copyright” sounds about as exciting as a tax seminar in a windowless room. But if you're a musician, a composer, or even a casual listener who once mashed up Billie Eilish and Kishore Kumar in your bedroom, it’s everything. It’s the invisible superpower that protects your creativity. It’s the thing that lets Arijit Singh sing without worrying that someone else will cash in on his heartbreak. And this World Intellectual Property (IP) Day, it’s time to finally give it the love it deserves.

Theme for 2025: IP and Music

IP rights are like those unsung backup singers: they don’t get the limelight, but they’re essential to keeping the show going. They give creators the legal tools to share their work across industries, collaborate with brands, sync their music to cinema, and still know they’ll be paid fairly. It’s the reason music doesn’t live in a silo anymore... it flows across sectors.

This year’s theme for World IP Day couldn't be more relevant: “IP and music: Feel the beat of IP.” Behind every catchy hook, lo-fi beat, and moody synth solo is a songwriter, a composer, a producer (or five) who deserves to be credited, compensated and celebrated. That only happens because IP has their backs.

The theme for World IP Day 2025 is a timely one. It’s all about how innovation policies and IP protections empower music-makers to keep doing what they do best: creating songs that stick in our heads, shape our identities, and sometimes, save our lives on bad days.

Music Copyright In A Nutshell:

Parag Kamani, one of India's sharpest entertainment lawyers and a music industry expert, explains it best: “Copyright is a bundle of rights given to creators under the Indian Copyright Act, 1957—a law that's been upgraded more times than your smartphone (1983, 1984, 1992, 1994, 1999, 2012, for the record).”

If you're a musician, you own rights to your lyrics, composition, sound recordings, and even performances. That riff you stayed up all night composing? Protected. That heart-wrenching ballad about your ex? Protected. Even the sad harmonica solo you added just before release. It gets more detailed. Kamani points out there are special rights too like sync rights (for music synced with film or ads), performance rights, and publishing rights. Every note you create travels with an invisible armory of laws to back it up.

Samples, Covers, and Why 'Borrowing' Is a Risky Hobby:

Here's where it gets messier. What about when you want to remix someone else's music? Kamani breaks it down: Under Indian law, sampling (lifting even a tiny part of someone else's song) is copyright infringement unless you have permission.

The same applies to cover versions, though there’s a legal workaround. Thanks to Section 31C of the Indian Copyright Act (amended in 2012), you can create a cover legally but only after giving notice, paying royalties, and clearly stating that it's a cover version. You can't pretend you’re the original artist. No sneaky cover album with a suspiciously similar logo allowed either. And mashups? Remixes? Again, unless you have consent or fall under a very narrow window of “fair use,” so you’re basically building your house on borrowed land.

As Kamani puts it: “The best way to avoid landing in legal hot water is to either license the track, or create something fresh.”

Copyright vs Trademark:

While copyright guards the content (the music, the lyrics, the recordings) trademarks protect branding. The moment someone hears the McDonald's "ba da ba ba ba" and thinks "I'm loving it," you’re seeing sound trademarks at work. Indian trademark law now even allows registration of sound marks and 3D shapes. So if you ever invent a sound that’s instantly recognizable (like the opening riff of Smoke On Water), you could actually trademark it. Who knew?

Today’s music landscape is not the polite world of the 1960s, where George Harrison could “accidentally” plagiarize a Chiffons song and only find out later in court. Today, it's a shark tank: one viral clip, one unlicensed beat, one reposted remix can set off lawsuits faster than a bad Twitter take.

Yet, IP laws aren't just about lawsuits and cease-and-desists. They’re about allowing artists to create freely and earn fairly. They remind us that the guitar solo you hear on Spotify or the delicate tanpura drone you hear at a Hindustani concert isn't just for your entertainment, it’s someone's life work, passion and hard-won creation.

As Kamani says: “Art deserves protection not because it's fragile, but because it's powerful.”

If you're an artist, today is a good day to thank copyright laws for having your back; and to brush up on what you own and what you need to protect. If you're a fan, today is a reminder that every song, every melody, every line of poetry you love came from someone who trusted the world enough to share it. And if you’re both, welcome to the club. Whatever you do... don't forget to license your samples!

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