Collection of Laws for Electronic Access
YH
CAMEROON
(a) ideas in themselves;
(b) laws, court judgments and other official instruments, as well as their official
translations;
(c) coats of arms, decorations, currency marks and other official insignia.
4.—(1) A work shall refer to a creation not only in its original form, but also in its
derivative or composite forms.
(2) In addition to the works referred to in Section 3 above, the following shall be
protected as composite works, without prejudice to the copyright in the already existing work:
(a) translations, adaptations, arrangements or other alterations of literary or artistic
works;
(b) collections of works, including those which express folklore or simple facts or data,
such as encyclopædias, anthologies, compiled data, which are reproduced either on machinereadable mediums or on any other form which, by the choice or arrangement of their contents,
constitute original works;
(c) folklore-inspired works.
5.—(1) Folklore shall belong originally to the national cultural heritage.
(2) The representation or direct or indirect fixation of folklore for private purposes shall
be allowed.
(3) Its representation, direct or indirect fixation for profit-making purposes shall be
subject to prior authorization from the service in charge of culture, in return for payment of
royalty whose amount shall be fixed by statutory instrument following the conditions
applicable in each of the categories of creation considered.
(4) The amount received shall be deposited in a cultural policy support fund.
6.—(1) The title of a work shall be protected as the work itself insofar as it has an
original feature.
(2) Even when the work is no longer protected, no one may use its title for another
work of the same genre when such use is likely to cause confusion in the mind of the public.
7.—(1) The author shall be the individual who created a literary or artistic work. The
author shall equally be the individual who designed the work and initiated its realization by an
automatic process.
(2) The author of a work protected by virtue of this law shall be the holder of the
copyright in the said work.
(3) The work shall be deemed to be created independently of any disclosure, solely
from the personal though incomplete realization of the design, even where such design is
CM001EN
Copyright, Law, 19/12/2000, No. 2000/011
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