Copyright

No. Under the Copyright Ordinance 1962, copyright subsists automatically when an original work is created. Registration with the Copyright Office is voluntary, but it produces a dated official record that courts treat as prima facie evidence, which makes enforcement faster and cheaper. We register selectively, not reflexively.

For most works — literary, dramatic, musical, and artistic — the term is the life of the author plus fifty years. Shorter fixed terms measured from publication apply to categories such as films, photographs, and sound recordings. We confirm the term for the specific work and edition in question, since the counting rules differ by category.

Yes. Computer programs fall within the definition of literary work under the Ordinance. Copyright protects the code as written — source and object — but not the underlying ideas, algorithms, or functionality. Protecting those requires confidentiality obligations and well-drafted contracts, which is why we treat software protection as a package rather than a single filing.

Work created by an employee in the course of employment under a contract of service generally belongs to the employer, subject to any agreement to the contrary. The fights happen at the edges: side projects, work done before joining, and people who were called employees but engaged as consultants. A clear IP clause in every employment contract removes the argument.

By default, the freelancer. An independent contractor is the author and first owner of what they create, and ownership only moves by a written, signed assignment. If your codebase was built by contractors without assignments, the company is running on licensed goodwill. This is fixable — confirmatory assignments are routine — but it should be fixed before an investor or acquirer finds it.

The realistic toolkit is layered: platform takedown procedures, demand notices, civil suits before the IP Tribunal with interim injunction applications, and, for commercial-scale piracy, criminal complaints under the Ordinance, which carries fines and imprisonment and gives the police seizure powers. Cross-border hosting complicates things, so we sequence the steps by where pressure will actually land.

The Ordinance requires an assignment to be in writing and signed by the assignor. Pakistan's Electronic Transactions Ordinance 2002 gives electronic signatures general legal recognition, and as of mid-2026 properly executed electronic assignments are used in practice, but for high-value IP we still recommend wet-ink or robust e-signature platforms with audit trails, because the assignment will be examined years later by a skeptical opponent.

It is a copyright question, not automatically a problem. Open-source licenses are copyright licenses with conditions — attribution, notice preservation, and in copyleft licenses, obligations that can reach your own code. Investors and enterprise customers increasingly ask for an open-source inventory, so we help clients build one and remediate the components that conflict with their commercial model.

The Ordinance gives authors rights that survive an assignment — principally to be identified with the work and to object to distortions that damage their reputation. Because these rights sit with the author personally, a well-drafted contract addresses them directly through consents and waivers to the extent the law permits. For businesses commissioning creative work, this clause is the difference between owning an asset and renting an argument.

The civil remedies include injunctions, damages or an account of the infringer's profits, and delivery up of infringing copies. In practice, the interim injunction is usually the remedy that matters commercially — it stops the harm while the case proceeds — which is why we build cases to win the injunction hearing, not just the eventual trial.