A copyright notice is a piece of text which accompanies a work and expresses the rights and wishes of the copyright owner (s). All “authors” of text or copyright material should include one with their work. It should announce that copyright exists in the work, make it clear who is the copyright owner, deter infringers and prevent ignorance being used as a defence in disputes.
Placing a Notice
The rule to adopt is to ensure that anyone with access to your work is aware of the copyright. If your work can be broken up into several pieces, then the notice should appear on each part. If it would normally be viewed as a whole then one will suffice.
In the case of a book you should only need one inside the front cover. Leaflets commercial documents etc. should have one on each item. Web pages should have one on every page.
In the music industry, one is placed on the CD, cassette or LP itself, and one is included on the accompanying sleeve or booklet. Photographs and designs will have one at the bottom of the work Manuscripts, if the work is still in the development stages you may choose to have one on every page of a manuscript, however, one on the front will normally suffice.
Always ensure that you obtain permission before you use anyone else’s work and include the copyright of any images, excerpts etc. that you have used which are not your own.
Writing a Notice
Copyright
Some countries will not accept the copyright symbol, they also require the word ‘copyright’ to appear in order to consider the notice valid, but for most ‘©’ is the normally recognised copyright symbol. Most countries across the world accept this as the correct manner of displaying copyright.
Year of publication
In case of a dispute of ownership of a work, the date plays an important part. If your work was developed and published before any potential opponents then you can usually expect to win any case which challenges your rights.
In the case of work which is continually updated, (for example a website), the year of publication can be shown as a period from first publication until the most recent update, (i.e. 2000-2003).
Copyright Owners name
This may only be one person, or it may be a collective, a band, group or team.
If there is one person who owns the rights to a work, then his/her name will appear on its own. If however, your work is owned by several people then you may choose to:
include the name of each member of the collective, or include the name of the collective itself.
This would give your copyright notice the following appearance:
Copyright © 1999 John Smith.
Title of Work (Optional)
You may wish to include this if you have several small works under one title. You can put either the overall title of the work or the title of the smaller work in the notice. The title is normally placed at the beginning.
This would give your copyright notice the following appearance:
‘Title of work’ Copyright © 1999 John Smith.
Phonogram copyright in sound recordings
Sound recordings have a copyright separate from the underlying musical composition, and a sound recordings should carry a phonogram copyright notice ‘?’(denoted by the P in a circle) for the recording itself. The standard ‘©’ notice should also be used, but in the case of sound recordings this is used to protect the cover design, lyric sheets or other printed material included with the sound recording.
This would give the appearance of the notice as
Copyright © 1999 John Smith, © 1999 John Smith.
On most computers the © symbol can be found within the ‘webdings’ font. The information so far is the minimum that both the Universal Copyright Convention and the UK Copyright Service suggest you include in your copyright notice. You can further increase your notice in order to maximise its use. To do this, you should include a disclaimer
Copyright disclaimers
A disclaimer states the terms under which the work may be used and gives information relating to what the copyright owner believes to be a breach of his/her/their copyright.
Disclaimers are straightforward statements, there is no need to get tied up with legal jargon, the point is to state your wishes clearly and succinctly
In some cases you may wish to permit certain activities, in others you may wish to withhold all rights, or require the user to apply for a licence to carry out certain actions. The disclaimer should appear as a sentence after the copyright notice.
Using disclaimers
There are several items to think about when wording your disclaimer. Decide in relation to your work, what you wish to permit. Be specific in your wording, make it clear what you will allow and what is prohibited. Think from the point of view of withholding all rights and then carefully word any allowances as exceptions, making sure it is clear that these are the only allowances you will make.
Here are some areas to consider:
Copying, Duplication and Reproduction - The right to produce a copy of the work. Do you wish certain groups to be able to copy your work? if so what terms would you attach?
Selling & Hiring
Normally this would be expressly forbidden without the copyright holders consent.
Distribution
You may for example have written a shareware program which you will allow to be duplicated and distributed freely so long as you are identified as the author.
Commercial, personal and educational
Will
you allow your work to be used differently by certain groups or individuals?
For example, perhaps you want to allow copying for private use but not
for commercial gain.
Licences
For
software, commercial and educational documents in particular, the copyright
disclaimer may carry information about obtaining a licence to reproduce
the work.
By not obtaining a licence, use of the work may be considered in breach
of copyright.
Author/Owner Rights
If for example, the work is distributed without your control, you will wish to ensure that you are still identified as the author/copyright owner.
Sample Disclaimer statements
‘All rights reserved’ - A simple ‘cover all’ statement. This is the most commonly used copyright disclaimer, and perhaps the clearest, and covers most eventualities.
'Any unauthorised broadcasting, public performance, copying or re-recording will constitute an infringement of copyright’ - Another ‘cover all’ statement, this one is designed for use on sound recordings, but can easily be adapted to apply to other types of work. The wording makes it clear that the copyright on the work is taken very seriously. For maximum effect you can combine this with ‘all rights reserved‘.
‘Permission granted to reproduce for personal and educational use only. Commercial copying, hiring, lending is prohibited.’ - This is widely used where you are happy for reproduction for private or educational use, but would expect royalties in the event that a commercial organisation used material for profit. For businesses and organisations this kind of disclaimer is of mutual benefit as allowing reproduction may help to promote their message
May be used free of charge. Selling without prior written consent prohibited. Obtain permission before redistributing. In all cases copyright notice/disclaimer must remain intact’ - This is the type of disclaimer often used for software distributed as freeware of shareware, by specifying that the copyright notice remains intact you ensure that all copies will identify you as the author.
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