Mime meaning

Mime describes a non-verbal performance built from expressive movement and gesture. In legal practice it arises when assessing copyright protection, licensing and infringement of staged or recorded performances and routines. Across the UK (England & Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland), the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 expressly treats a work of mime as a dramatic work. Protection will subsist if the work is original and fixed (for example, captured in choreography notes, notation or an audio‑visual recording). In Ireland, the Copyright and Related Rights Act 2000 likewise treats mime within the category of dramatic works (often framed as entertainment in dumb show or choreographic works), with the same core requirements of originality and fixation. As a dramatic work, a protected mime routine gives the author exclusive rights to control reproduction of the fixation, public performance, communication to the public, distribution and adaptation. Permission is generally required to stage, record, stream or broadcast the routine, and to create derivative versions. The author is the creator; copyright duration typically runs for 70 years after the author’s death. Terminology differs slightly between the UK and Ireland, but the legal effect—mime as a protectable dramatic work—is broadly consistent.