Autorské právo

Under Czech law

Copyright is governed by the Copyright Act (autorský zákon, Act No. 121/2000 Sb.). A work is protected from the moment it is expressed in any objectively perceivable form (§ 9) — there is no register, deposit, or © formality. Moral rights (authorship, integrity, § 11) are inalienable and stay with the author; economic rights (§ 12+) last for the author''s life plus 70 years (§ 27) and are exercised through licences rather than outright transfer between living persons.

Two regimes matter enormously in practice: the employee work (zaměstnanecké dílo, § 58), where the employer exercises the economic rights to works created in employment by default, and commissioned works, where — absent a written licence — the client often gets far less than assumed. Software is protected as a literary work (§ 65).

A practical example

A startup pays a freelance designer for a logo and later finds the same designer licensing similar artwork elsewhere, while the startup cannot even register its own logo as a trademark cleanly. The invoice said "logo — 25 000 Kč" and nothing more; without an exclusive licence in writing, the startup holds only the narrow purpose-implied licence of § 2376 of the Civil Code. A one-page IP assignment-and-licence rider would have prevented all of it.

When you need a lawyer

Whenever paid creative or software work changes hands: licence scope, exclusivity, and modification rights belong in writing. And on the enforcement side — takedowns, § 40 claims for restraint and compensation, and the line between inspiration and infringement.