In El Salvador, copyrights are protected by the Intellectual Property Law, which aims to safeguard, promote, and encourage related rights, industrial property, utility models, industrial or commercial designs, test data, and copyrights.
According to our lawyer, Fátima Espinal, copyright comprises both moral and economic rights. The economic rights of the author include the authority to authorize or prohibit the use of their works and to receive economic benefits from their utilization. On the other hand, the moral right of the author is inalienable and personal, allowing them to publish works in the form and manner they consider appropriate, oppose the plagiarism of the work, claim authorship of the work, conceal their name, or use pseudonyms.
Regarding the protection of works, our expert clarifies that foreigners who publish their works in El Salvador will enjoy the same rights as Salvadorans, and works published abroad will be protected in the country according to the terms established in treaties and agreements ratified by the State.
Among the protected works are books, pamphlets, and writings, computer programs, musical works, dramatic or dramatic-musical and choreographic works, architectural or engineering works, photographs, silent, spoken or musical cinematographic productions, radio or television works.
To effectively protect creations, the National Registry Center (CNR) offers Copyright Deposit services, in which the institution certifies the existence of the work. The deposit is made for the greater legal security of the rights holders and as evidence of their rights.
To request the deposit, the interested party must submit the original application, attach one or two copies of the work, pay $11.43 as fees, and attach the payment receipt. In addition, the CNR offers other services related to copyrights, patents, and distinctive signs that can be consulted on their website.
Finally, Espinal highlights that the violation of copyrights and related rights is classified in the Penal Code, and offenders can be punished with imprisonment from 2 to 4 years, and from 4 to 6 years in case of aggravated violation. Violations include the reproduction, plagiarism, or distribution of a literary or artistic work, its transformation, interpretation, or artistic performance fixed in any medium or communicated through any means without the authorization of the rights holders, as well as the importation, exportation, or storage of copies of the work without authorization.
If you have more inquiries about this or other topics, you can contact us through our social media or by visiting our offices located at Cuscatlán Street, #4312, Escalón District, San Salvador, El Salvador.
- Written by the Torres Legal Team.