Serial And Periodical Works Need To Be Copyrighted
Posted on March 31, 2008 - Filed Under Legal and Law | Leave a Comment
If you are trying to register any type of newspaper, magazine or other periodically occurring work you should follow the copyright process as explained here. Serial and periodical works can generally be described as any work issued in parts that can be chronologically tracked by a numeric or alphabetical series.
Read More..>>Public Domain
Posted on March 27, 2008 - Filed Under Legal and Law | Leave a Comment
Pronunciation: ‘publik dow’meyn
Definition: [noun] property rights that are held by the public at large
(Public Domain) The total absence of copyright protection. If something is “in the public domain” then anyone can copy it or use it in any way they wish. The author has none of the exclusive rights which apply to a copyright work.
The phrase “public domain” is often used incorrectly to refer to freeware or shareware (software which is copyrighted but is distributed without (advance) payment). Public domain means no copyright — no exclusive rights. In fact the phrase “public domain” has no legal status at all in the UK.
Read More..>>Intellectual Property – The 3 Branches: Copyrights, Patents & Trademarks
Posted on March 27, 2008 - Filed Under Legal and Law | Leave a Comment
When you hear the phrase intellectual property, what do you think of? How can something that exists in your mind be considered property? Are your ideas your property similar to that of your house or car?
Simply put, no, your ideas are not something you can solely own. After all, if ideas were never shared in the marketplace, where would we be? Imagine if Bill Gates had never shared his ideas about the new BASIC programming language that he and Paul Allen developed…would Microsoft exist? How would that have impacted our world today? Let’s take it back even further: what would life be like if Louis Pasteur had never shared his ideas about heat treatment, what we now call pasteurization? The sharing of ideas has brought us to where we are, good and bad.
Read More..>>Honoring The Copyrights Of Composers, Too
Posted on March 26, 2008 - Filed Under Legal and Law | Leave a Comment
Many photographers use music to enhance their photography. But since music is a work protected by copyright law, make sure that you honor the copyright of the composer, too.
Most photographers recognize that copying music from a friend or downloading from a music sharing website is illegal. But even if you purchased the CD or song outright, you may be infringing on the copyrights if you use the music for more than personal purposes.
Read More..>>Licensing Your Copyrighted Works
Posted on March 25, 2008 - Filed Under Legal and Law | Leave a Comment
If you’ve taken the necessary steps to register your copyrighted works, you inevitably will have an opportunity to royalties off of them. To take advantage of the opportunity, you will need to be familiar with copyright license agreements.
Copyright License Agreement
A copyright license agreement sets for the terms under which a third party can use your content. In legal language, you will the “licensor” with the other party being the “licensee.” The purpose of the agreement is to set forth the terms under which you, the licensor, will grant the third party, licensee, the right to use, publish or reuse your copyrighted work in exchange for a royalty. Let’s take a closer look at key components of the licensing agreement.
Read More..>>Intellectual Property: Design - Spare Parts
Posted on March 23, 2008 - Filed Under Legal and Law | Leave a Comment
In Dyson Ltd v Qualtex [2004], Dyson brought proceedings against the defendant, Qualtex, a manufacturer of vacuum cleaner spare parts, alleging infringement of its unregistered design rights in various spare parts comprising different products. Unregistered design rights are unregistrable intellectual property rights that arise automatically by the operation of law and protect the owners of original designs from, amongst other things, unauthorised copying. The existence of such rights is subject to certain exceptions.
Under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, design rights do not subsist in:
Read More..>>Internet Law In 2007
Posted on March 20, 2008 - Filed Under Home and Family, Legal and Law | Leave a Comment
As we start off the 2007 year, many in the web community probably have questions about what developments we can expect in web law in 2007. Well, the issues already appear to be coming together.
Internet Law in 2007
The beauty of the web is it is still a relatively new communication platform and is evolving on a daily basis. From a legal standpoint, this raises all kinds of issues and problems. The law prefers stability. It is also generally slow to react to new issues. Since the net is evolving on a daily basis, this puts the legal issues regarding it in some what of a time warp. Simply put, the law is a couple years behind on issues such as phishing, privacy and so on. Still, 2007 is cranking up to be an interesting year.
Read More..>>How To Give Notice Of Copyright On Your Works
Posted on March 17, 2008 - Filed Under Legal and Law | Leave a Comment
The use of a copyright notice is no longer required under U. S. law, but you should still give notice whenever possible. Because prior law did contain such a requirement, however, the use of notice is still relevant to the copyright status of older works.
Under the 1976 Copyright Act, creators of covered works were required to give notice of copyright on the work in question. This requirement was eliminated when the United States signed onto the Berne Convention in March 1989.
Read More..>>Copyright And The Internet
Posted on March 16, 2008 - Filed Under Home and Family, Legal and Law | Leave a Comment
If a piece of work or something someone/some people have created then they should own the rights to it and therefore it belongs to them. There is of course varying degrees in how many rights they reserve and different countries more than likely have their own interpretations, but on the web this becomes a bit more of a grey area, with no-one to stringently enforce the laws, that’s not to say that if you do violate them you wont be caught.
Read More..>>Not Every Written Word Can Be Copyrighted
Posted on March 16, 2008 - Filed Under Legal and Law | Leave a Comment
Not Every Written Word Can Be Copyrighted
By Rosemary Hauschild
A common misconception about copyright protection is that it covers all types of ideas and their expression.
In fact, what can be protected is the description, explanation or illustration chosen by the author to express an idea or system. This expression is what is called “original works of authorship”. (See title 17, section 102 of the U.S. Copyright Code.)
The statute clearly states that ideas and concepts cannot be protected by copyright. In addition, methods or systems are not protected. Section 17 clearly expresses this principle: