The republic of Cyprus has laws protecting writers, artists and whoever is producing original work, which is subject to copyright.
Relevant Laws can be found at the provided link below i.e. the world intellectual property office.
Relevant amendments were passed over the years, mainly of what is considered to be capable of being copyright material, and the final test is a combination of legal & practical questions. Recently there were tax incentives in order to attract foreign registration of copyrights & patents, as can be observed[1].
“IP box regimes can be broadly divided into two categories. The first category (adopted by France, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom) provides for reduced rates of tax on qualifying income. The second category (adopted by Belgium, Hungary, Luxembourg, Spain and Cyprus) provides for an exemption of a specified proportion of revenues. This second category further subdivides into schemes that exempt a proportion of gross revenues and those that exempt a proportion of net revenues.
Intellectual property projects lend themselves to cross-border planning by reason of the mobility of intellectual property rights, which do not consist of physical assets and so can be easily moved between different jurisdictions and tax systems according to prevailing circumstances and developments in different tax jurisdictions. By amending its tax legislation Cyprus hopes to consolidate its position as a hub for the cross-border holding and exploitation of intellectual property rights.
The amendments to the Income Tax Laws are effective from January 1, 2012 and apply to all expenditure for the acquisition or development of intangible assets incurred by a person carrying on a business. They apply to all categories of intellectual property, including the rights set out in the Patent Law of 1998 as amended, the Intellectual Property Rights Law of 1976 as amended and the Trademarks Law, Cap. 268 as amended”[2].
Interestingly enough mobile applications are not up for registration as patents, however if there is an innovation on application as such making a design or usage innovation can be patented separately and not as an existing patent i.e. ‘mobile-application’.
There are very interesting design rights as well copyrighted as ‘Trade-Marks’. One of the most famous and maybe the oldest-one is the well-known matches the ‘Beduin’™
Now moving-on today we will realize that web-page content is automatically copyrighted material, when published to a web-page (and/or uploaded). There is a certain wording usually below of the page whereas is stating the following words:
Copyright @ (Name of the Author/Web developer/Company or Physical Person) and then 2016 (Year that copyrighted material is published on-line).
In previous years there were some web pages that : “This is a copyrighted material and copying the text/images/content without the prior consent of the owner of the web pages was consisting of an offence or copyright infringement subject to further legal action/s against the person infringing such copyright content/material. There was interestingly enough some web-pages that the computer user could not proceed to the ‘right-click’ i.e. to copy/paste on a web-page content. Especially in America there was a web-page when the user was ‘right-clicking’ the wording: ‘’Are you trying to steal my work” was appearing, instead of the ‘paste’ option.
There was an informal practice as well in the Cypriot Jurisdiction, whereas the writer/owner of original work either -it was a script or a song scroll or a scenario- was using the postal system to send his/her work to his own postal address as a registered post. Eventually receiving it as the recipient and holding the confirming receipt of receiving was creating a chronological evidence, that in case of infringement, the employee of the post-office could be used as a witness that chronologically the ‘sealed-unopened’ envelop came first. Henceforth it was a good proof that the person infringing the real owner’s work could not claim the work as his/her own work.
Finally the IP rights either there are royalties or patents or copyright work, are exempt around 80 % on capital gains tax i.e. a Cyprus registered company doing such activities can claim back the 80 % of declared tax pursuant to the provisions of relevant law.
By: George Panayides, Legal Advisor, RMC Logistics Ltd
