Copyright in the United Kingdom
UK legislation complies with both World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) treaties and European directives on copyright and is captured principally in the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. The Act has been amended several times but the changes have not been consolidated into a single text. An unofficial consolidation is provided via the site of the UK Intellectual Property Office (IPO) which provides a very useful overview of intellectual property, the services offered by the UK IPO and links to electronic copies of both Acts of Parliament and Statutory Instruments which together form the legislation that has amended the 1988 Act.
See http://www.ipo.gov.uk/copy/c-law
UK legislation is structured as a logical series of answers to the following questions:
What is a copyright ‘work’?
A copyright work is an original literary, dramatic, musical or artistic creation and each work created must fit one of these categories as listed in the table ‘ Categories of works and periods of protection ’ and meet the criteria as a qualifying copyright work as defined in the Act. This also applies to sound recordings, films, broadcasts (including websites) and typographical arrangements of published works.