Copyrights Explained

Copyright laws are some of the most confusing laws in existence. One part of being a blogger is knowing what you can and cannot do, so sadly you have to know at least the basics of the copyright laws to succeed.

Some parts of the information contained here only apply to the US laws, although the general aspects are pretty much the same in most developed-nations.

Just a note: I am not a lawyer nor am I a law student. Please contact an attorney if you have any questions in regards to the laws, do not contact me.

What is copyright

The US copyright office defines a copyright as the following.

“Copyright is a form of protection provided by the laws of the United States (title 17, U. S. Code) to the authors of “original works of authorship,” including literary, dramatic, musical, artistic, and certain other intellectual works.”

Copyrights vs patents vs trademarks

Copyright is one of three forms of protection. It is very common to see the words copyright, trademark, and patent be interchanged. You can’t do that. All three things are forms of protection, but they protect very different things.

Copyrights protect works, such as the bits and bytes that make up a computer program or the text in a book. Copyrights do not protect names, logos, or ideas. The © is the official
copyright symbol. It should be noted that the US government does not require you to use the symbol, and you are allowed to use it without having your product registered with the copyright office.

Trademarks protect names and logos. A trademark is a unique identifier of your service, company, or product. When you see the ® it means that the name or logo has been registered as an official trademark. You are, however, allowed to freely use the ™ symbol without registration.

And finally we have patents, which protects ideas and inventions. Patents do not cover logos, the design of a logo, or physical objects. Instead, they protect inventions. The design of an ink-jet printer is a patent, as well as the design of the steering wheel.

Computer software is a perfect example of all three things. The graphics are copyrighted, the logos/names are trademarked, and the way something works on it may be a patent.

Are copyrights required?

Absolutely not. Many food companies do not copyright recipes they use for their products. You might be thinking, “Are they crazy.” Well actually they are smart. Whenever you copyright something it becomes visible to the entire public. This is also true with trademarks and patents.

How does a copyright protect my product?

When you register a copyright you are basically teaming up with the government to ensure no one copies it. To prove a copyright infringement case all you have to prove is that they copied your work. However, if you do not get a copyright registered you cannot sue for damages, but you may be able to get the offending work taken down. This is why registration is very important. It can help prove that you, without a doubt, created the work first.

There is a practice of “Poor man’s copyright” where you mail yourself a copy of your work, but there is no provision in the law that protects you by doing this.

Fair use

Fair use is a doctrine in the law that lets you use a copyrighted work without the creator’s permission. The doctrine is there to help prevent abuse of the system by copyright holders, it basically balances the rights of the public with the rights of the copyright holder. The fair use laws are very “iffy”, especially when it comes to the Internet.

There are already several activities that the courts have found to be “fair use.” Among them is the use of short quotations for news reporting and education, reproduction of work for education, and accidental inclusion of a copyrighted work in the scene of a movie or TV show.

There have also been some recent cases including fair use and the Internet. One of the more notable cases is Kelly v. Arriba Soft Corporation”. This case had to do with the inline linking (embedding) of images on web pages (in this case, image search results). The courts ruled partly in favor of Arriba Soft. They found that using thumbnails of images is legal because the thumbnail is viewed as being a “transformative work.” The court’s decision was also slightly in favor of Kelly because they did not rule for (or against) Arriba Soft on the issue of linking to the full sized image instead of the page where the image was being held.

Online Copyright Infringement Liability Limitation Act

The OCILLA is an act that is part of the DMCA that helps protect online service providers from copyright infringement by their users. To be protected the service providers must follow a few rules:

1. Not encourage copyright infringement either directly nor indirectly
2. Not profit directly from copyright infringement
3. Must have proper takedown and put-back notices
4. Must have no knowledge that the content was illegal

If you are planning on starting a user-driven web site you will definitely want to take a look at the OCILLA laws.

Conclusion

You should now understand the basics of copyrights, what they protect and how they work. There is a lot more to the laws, so if you want to read more about them I have a few links for you.

US Copyright Office
Electronic Frontier Foundation
Wikipedia (some people hate it, but it is pretty accurate)

This document was not written by a lawyer, so as I said above, contact an attorney if you have questions about the laws.

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