II. Copyright law overview
A. Copyright law is designed, most basically, to protect works from being copied by people
who don't own the rights to them. The purpose of the law is to provide the protections
necessary to direct investment toward production of abundant information.
B. The basic law on copyright is fairly straightforward: See 17 U.S.C. §102 (Subject Matter of
Copyright: In General)
C. Specific Elements of Copyright Protection:
1. Copyright law protects original works of authorship fixed in any tangible medium.
a) This standard is a fairly easy one to meet; it is much less stringent than that for
getting a patent. As logically follows, copyright offers much less protection than
patent.
b) Copyright owners don't have to record their copyright. Copyright can simply be
asserted once the work is fixed in a tangible medium. While copyright can be
registered (and, if a lawsuit is filed to enforce a copyright, must be registered at that
time), such registration is not necessary to create the copyright protection.
Note: Thus the © symbol is not a requirement to make an item protected, nor is the
lack of such a symbol any indication that the work is not copyrighted. However,
including the © symbol is an easy way to send a clear reminder to readers that the
work is protected and that the author values that protection.
2. Covered works are anything fixed in a tangible medium.
a) This includes books, private letters, paintings, computer programs, motion
pictures and other audiovisual work. It also includes anything else fixed, no matter
how it is fixed. Thus, it includes documents "written" on a computer disk, web
pages, notes on scraps of paper, even your grocery list. Anything fixed qualifies for
protection.
b) This of course makes any policy requiring "reporting" of the creation of copyright
material, or intellectual property, an absurdity.