Copyright: Legal Issues You Need to Know

[المحامي جهاد فرعون]

What is a Copyright?
United States Copyright Law has its origins in the Constitution, which secures exclusive rights to authors for their writings for a limited time. People who create works that we all enjoy and appreciate should be compensated for their talent and hard work. The copyright law, officially known as the Copyright Act, ensures that we all do the right thing: respect the effort, as well as the intellectual property, of others.

The copyright law has been updated over the years to reflect new technology. The updates or revisions to the law expand the definition of "authors" and "writings," among other things. Nowadays, an "author" can still be a writer, but an author can also be the person who creates works that our Founding Fathers could never have envisioned. Here are just a few developments that didn't exist in 1790, when the Copyright Office was established: photographs, sound recordings (from Edison wax cylinders to vinyl LPs to 8-track tapes to audio cassettes to CDs to MP3s), movies, soundtracks, software, and, of course, video productions on tape, laser disc, DVD or streaming Internet video.

Over the years, Congress also expanded the term of copyright enforceability. At the turn of the last century, you could secure copyright protection for 28 years and you could renew it for another 28 years. After that, your work entered the public domain, so anyone could copy or modify your work without your permission. As of 1978, however, law protects your work for 70 years after your demise. Until recently, the term was actually your life plus 50 years, but when Sonny Bono served in the House of Representatives, he helped extend copyright protection for "I Got You Babe" (as well as all other works, of course) for an additional 20 years.

Another major and relatively recent (1978) development in the copyright law provides copyright protection for any completed work. The copyright notice (A© + your name + year of creation) was required on all works and it is still recommended, but not mandatory. You are also strongly encouraged to register your work in the Copyright Office, but that action is also not required, unless you intend to enforce your rights in court. For information about copyright registration, access the Library of Congress and the Copyright Office Web site http://www.lcweb.loc.gov/copyright or contact an intellectual property attorney.

Exclusively Yours
A copyright is an exclusive right. That means you have the right to exclude all others from copying your work or from making works derived from your work. The other side of the coin, of course, is that you do not have the right to copy another person's work (music, screenplay, images) without permission, unless the work is in the public domain.

A good, conservative rule of thumb is that you should assume that a work is protected by copyright if it had been created after 1922, as all works created before that are now in the public domain. For example, older photographs, paintings, books and sheet music are available for your use without permission from the author. Copyright law protects a musical performance recorded after 1922, even if the score was composed before 1922. You can contact the U.S. Copyright Office to find registered material. Copyright Office personnel can conduct a search, for a modest fee.[/align][/align]