It seems that there is always a lot of controversy surrounding the subject of copyright. Part of this might be due to the fact that there is no one universal copyright law, and there are some variations between the copyright laws of different countries. However, with very few exceptions, most countries around the world are signatories of international copyright agreements, going all the way back to the Berne Convention of 1886 and the Universal Copyright Convention of 1952 (under the auspices of UNESCO). As a designer myself I therefore refer to these agreements to understand my own author rights. And, as has already been stated here, copyright protects the "form" in which ideas are transmitted, and not the ideas themselves. To quote, "To be protected, a work has to be more than a mere idea. The distinction between protected works and ideas lies at the very heart of copyright law. The protection of a given work applies to the expressions of ideas that are contained therein. Accordingly, in order for copyright in a work to be infringed or violated, one has to copy the form in which the ideas are expressed. The mere use of ideas found in a work does not represent a copyright violation."
You can find more in-depth information on the subject (check out the links for several downloadable pdf files on the basics of copyright law) on the UNESCO website:
http://www.unesco.org/new/en/culture...ies/copyright/
Hope this is helpful...