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Copyrights
Information
on copyright law, active lawsuits, copyright registration, the “Public
Domain”, “Fair Use” opportunities, Piracy, and
copyright protection … all from some of the most experienced
copyright professionals in the world.
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Ten
Simple Steps to Follow to Assure Your Copyrightable Original Work
is Properly Registered
1. Determine whether or not your creative expression qualifies for
copyright protection. No ideas. No short phrases. No concepts. No
government produced material of any kind. If your work is more than
5 years old, consult your attorney for any special advice and instructions.
2. If your "work" is copyrightable, determine whether
it is published or unpublished. Send your completed work to a third
party you can trust to verify that the work was, indeed, complete
and published when you first say it is on your copyright registration
forms. You can download these forms online from the U.S. Copyright
Office at www.copyright.gov.
3. Decide whether you are going to register one "work"
or a collection of many "works" on one form. The Copyright
Office now encourages the registration of multiple qualifying works
on one registration form for certain kinds of copyrightable works,
while you should be able to maintain individual statutory damage
claims (see below) if your work, or works, are infringed. Again
consult your attorney on this one.
4. In general terms, a copyrightable work can be registered on its
own if it "lives it's own copyright life", and is not
simply a component of a larger, more comprehensive, independent
work. In other words, does it have independent value to those who
use it , value unrelated to any other copyrighted works you may
have developed along with it, or roughly at the same time?
5. If you are registering multiple works at the same time, determine
whether you are going to use the Copyright Office extension form
or submit your multiple works independent of the extension form.
There is a limit as to how many independent works you can put on
each extension form. In either case, you will need to submit the
correct Registration Form, such as Form VA, for works of the "Visual
Arts".
6. Submit your work(s) to the U.S. Copyright Office, with your completed
registration request form, your required processing fees, and any
Library of Congress deposits that are required.
7. Be sure to send your information to the U.S. Copyright Office
via overnight delivery service so that you will get a receipt to
prove when your registration request was first received in Washington
D.C. This could be important. Do not delay even for a few days.
8. Make sure you make a complete copy of everything you send to
the Copyright Office and store these duplicates in a safe place
either in your office, at home, or with your accountant or attorney.
You may even want someone to attest to this mailing so as to prove
the completeness of your registrations in the unlikely event the
Copyright Office or Library of Congress should lose your information
and/or records.
9. You will need to prove your copyrights are registered in order
to file a copyright infringement lawsuit in the U.S. Many other
countries around the world comply with the same copyright protection
principles as the U.S., as agreed to in the Berne Convention and
WIPO treaties.
10. With your copyrights properly registered, you may recover attorneys
fees and other court costs in such legal proceedings, as well as
Statutory damages. Statutory damages provide a vehicle for estimating
the likely damage (up to $30,000 per work infringed for "regular"
infringements, and up to $150,000 per work infringed if the infringement
is deemed to be "willful") to the copyright holders when
distribution and damages, such as those experienced via the Internet,
are difficult to quantity and prove.
PLEASE NOTE. Someone who infringes your registered
copyrights is likely to claim they were misled by someone else or
had no idea the photographs, songs, music, movies, writings, videos,
or clipart illustrations were protected by copyrights. We call this
"willful blindness" and it is not considered a valid excuse
for copyright infringement activity under our laws. Nor is ignorance.
If they were, don't you think everyone would make such claims?
PUBLIC DOMAIN WARNING. Finally, many copyright
defense lawyers are now claiming their clients believed their infringements
were somehow "fair use", or otherwise "freely distributable"
as part of the "Public Domain". Nonsense. No intelligent,
fair minded judge in this country would accept such a defense without
specific proof. The "public domain" is a wonderful resource
and public service for any of us who wish to contribute. But a specific
process must be followed to properly do so. For infringers to claim
your work has been submitted to the "public domain" by
someone other than you is both laughable, as well as unconscionable,
in any civilized country that respects copyright laws and their
proper enforcements.
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