John's Blogs

The copywrite laws of the United States are written to protect you the writer; hence the term Copywrite. Simply stated this little symbol  © (which if you’re using MS Office, you can insert into your article or story by hitting, alt 0169 on your keyboard) is all you need by law to give any written work the protection of the copywrite laws. You can take it one step further; however I’ll get into that in a minute.

Basically what the copywrite law states is that only you as the author of any given works (you have created yourself), is the only one that knows the outcome of that work, so the moment you add the copywrite symbol, ©, (remember? Alt 0169) it is protected.

I have made up a basic manuscript that I use for almost everything I write. I have included the title of the article or story, my name, the year in which it was created, (exact date is saved on my computer)  and the copy write symbol all in the header as in the example above or below.

Project Title

By:  J. Francis                                                                                                  © 2009

That’s it, that’s all you need to protect your work, however  for whatever reason I seem to make sure everyone knows this particular work is mine and add this little statement at the end of the article.

©, 2010  J. Francis – All rights reserved. If for no other reason, it makes me feel better.

Oh yeah; don’t forget to change the year in the header on Jan 1.

As I said you can take the whole thing one step further, by paying the current 2010 fee of $35.00 to the U.S Copywrite office @  http://www.copyright.gov you can add that extra step of protection.  My own feelings on this is that unless you are trying to protect a novel or screen play, which in addition you will want to register with the Library of Congress; this is simply not necessary.  Adding that little copywrite symbol  to that basic everyday stuff we write is all you need to prove the work is yours. Especially considering that fact that you have a permanent record stored on your computer.  The screenshot on the left shows what that looks like. I hope this brief explanation helps to sort out just what a copywrite is, and how you can protect yourself.

I don’t want to over simplify this because there is a lot more to the copywrite laws than will fit in a brief explanation. To read more about the U.S. Copywrite laws click on the link above.

© 2010 J. Francis – All rights reserved. See what I mean