(1) According to this Law, all works expressed in a certain objective form in the literary, artistic and scientific field are protected, regardless of whether they have been made known to the public or not.

(2) The author benefits from copyright protection of his work by the very fact of its creation. The creation and exercise of copyright shall not require the registration of the work or any other act of notification or other formalities.

(3) Copyright consists of patrimonial rights and moral rights (personal non-pecuniary rights).

(4) Copyright does not depend on the right of ownership of the material object in which the work has found expression. The acquisition of such an object does not confer on its owner any of the rights granted to the author by this Law.

(5) The patrimonial rights may belong to the author or to another natural or legal person who legally owns the rights (the rights holder).

(6) Copyright protection shall extend to the form of expression, but shall not extend to ideas, theories, scientific discoveries, processes, methods of operation or mathematical concepts as such, nor to inventions contained in a work, regardless of the manner of their acquisition, explanation or expression.

(1) Copyright extends to:

a) works, regardless of where they were first published, whose copyright holder is a natural or legal person in the Republic of Moldova;

b) works published for the first time in the Republic of Moldova, irrespective of the domicile or place of business of the owner of the copyright in such works;

c) other works, in accordance with international treaties to which the Republic of Moldova is a party.

(2) A work shall also be considered as published for the first time in the Republic of Moldova if it has been published in the Republic of Moldova within 30 days from the date of its first publication abroad.

(1) Copyright extends to literary, artistic and scientific works expressed in the following forms:

a) written (manuscript, typescript, score, etc.);

b) oral (public performance, etc.);

c) audio or video print (mechanical, magnetic, digital, optical, etc.);

d) image (drawing, sketch, painting, plan, photogravure, etc.);

e) three-dimensional (sculpture, model, model, construction, etc.);

f) in other forms.

(2) Objects of copyright are:

a) literary works (stories, essays, novels, poems, etc.);

b) computer programs which are protected in the same way as literary works;

c) scientific works;

d) dramatic and dramatico-musical works, scripts and drafts of scripts, libretti, film synopses;

e) musical works with or without text;

f) choreographic works and pantomimes;

g) audiovisual works;

h) works of painting, sculpture, graphics and other works of fine art;

i) works of architecture, town planning and horticultural art;

j) works of applied art;

k) photographic works and works obtained by a process analogous to photography;

l) maps, plans, sketches and three-dimensional works in the fields of geography, topography, architecture and other fields of science;

m) databases;

n) other works.

(3) Without prejudice to the rights of the author of the original work, copyright shall also protect derivative and integral works on which one or more works and/or any other pre-existing materials are based, namely:

a) translations, adaptations, annotations, musical arrangements and any other transformations of literary, artistic or scientific works, provided that they constitute the results of intellectual creation;

b) collections of literary, artistic or scientific works (encyclopaedias and anthologies, compilations of other material or data, whether or not protected, including databases), provided that, by reason of the selection and arrangement of their contents, they constitute the results of intellectual creation.

(4) Copyright also protects as such a component part or other element of the work (including the title or characters of the work) which is itself an intellectual creation.

(5) The works, as well as component parts or other elements of the works specified in para. (1) to (4) shall be protected if they are original in the sense that they are in themselves intellectual creations of authorship. No other criteria, such as quantitative, qualitative or aesthetic characteristics, shall apply to determine whether such works are eligible for protection.

Copyright protection under this Act does not extend to:

a) normative acts, other acts of administrative, political or judicial character (laws, court decisions, etc.) and official translations thereof;

b) State symbols and official State signs (flags, coats of arms, decorations, money signs, etc.);

c) folklore expressions;

d) news of the day and various facts which are merely information.

(1) The natural person under whose name the work is first published shall, in the absence of proof to the contrary, be deemed to be the author.

(2) Where the work has been published anonymously or under a pseudonym which does not enable the author to be identified, the publisher whose name appears on the work shall, in the absence of proof to the contrary, be deemed to be the author's representative and shall be entitled to protect and exercise the author's rights.

(3) The natural or legal person whose name or designation appears on an audiovisual work, videogram or phonogram shall, in the absence of proof to the contrary, be considered the producer of the audiovisual work, videogram or phonogram in question.

(4) In order to inform the public about his rights, the copyright owner shall use the copyright protection symbol, which shall be applied on each copy of the work and shall consist of three elements:

a) the Latin letter "C" enclosed in a circle;

b) the name or designation of the exclusive copyright owner;

         c) the year of first publication of the work.

(5) The use of the copyright protection symbol shall not be a condition for granting the work the protection provided for by this Law.

(6) The owner of the exclusive copyright on a published or unpublished work may register it in the official state registers during the term of copyright protection.

(7) The person whose work has been registered shall be issued with a certificate of the prescribed model.  In accordance with art. 5 para. (2) and with para. (1) of this article, this certificate cannot serve as a presumption of paternity. In case of dispute, the court may recognise the registration as a presumption of authorship unless the contrary is proved.

(8) State registration of works protected by copyright and related rights shall be carried out by AGEPI in accordance with the regulation approved by the Government.

(1) The author of a work shall enjoy the following moral rights:

a) the right of authorship - the right to be acknowledged as the author of his work and the right to claim such acknowledgement, including by indicating his name on all copies of the published work or by referring to his name, as is customary, in the case of any exploitation of the work, except where this is impossible and where the absence of an obligation to indicate the author's name arises from other provisions of this Act;

b) the right to a name - the right of the author to decide how his name will appear in the exploitation of the work (real name, pseudonym or anonymous);

c) the right to respect for the integrity of the work - the right to protection of his work against any distortion, distortion or any other harm to the work that would damage the author's honour or reputation;

d) the right to disclosure of the work - the right to decide whether, how and when the work will be made known to the public;

e) the right to withdraw the work - the right of the author to withdraw his work from the commercial circuit, compensating the holder of the right of exploitation if he is harmed by the exercise of the withdrawal.

(2) Moral rights shall not be subject to any waiver or assignment and shall be imprescriptible, even if the author assigns his economic rights.

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