Copyrights

• Protection begins upon fixation of the work in a tangible medium

  • No notice REQUIRED, but needed for statutory damage claims

• Register commercially important works

  • Normally include the first and last 10 pages of source code to maintain trade secret protection

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Copyright starts from the moment the work is fixed in a tangible medium by the author. This includes, television broadcasts, indelibly etching words as bits using word processor software and voice recordings.

Notice is NO LONGER required. It used to be that in the US, publishing a work without the notice was fatal. Today, the notice only serves to protect claims for statutory damages in a copyright infringement suit.

You can register commercially important works with the copyright office by filing out a one page form and submitting it with a copy of the work.

For source code, a special procedure is available that allows you to register the code by sending only the first and last 10 pages to the copyright office. This is designed to help protect any trade secrets in the code.