Copyright Law:
The U.S. Copyright Law was established as a way to protect the writings of people by granting them a copyright to their work. The term ‘writings’ now includes visuals, images, illustrations, pictures, and photographs as well as written content. To know the scope of the Copyright Law, you have to first understand what a copyright is.
What Is a Copyright?
A copyright is the granting to the creator of any creative and original ‘writings’, the exclusive right to use, sell, or copy their works. Any copyrighted material cannot be used, sold, or copied by anyone else without the permission of the person who holds the copyright or in cases where it is considered Fair Use.
A copyright is an expressed right, meaning that if you are the original creator of any tangible works, then you have an automatic copyright to that work. Earlier, people needed to put up a notice of copyright saying that the work is copyrighted by them, but after the Berne copyright convention was signed by most leading nations, no such notice has to be given or posted along with the work and the work becomes the copyright of the creator as soon as it is created.
Although a copyright notice is not mandatory, it is always better to have one posted along with your work so that you have a better chance of recovering damages if anyone copies your work and is in violation of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you ever want to sue someone for violating the copyright law, then you will need to first get your work registered.
What Is Included In Copyright Laws?
Under the U.S. Copyright Law any original work can be copyrighted. This includes articles, books, film, tapes, stage plays, motion pictures, musical compositions, musical lyrics, fine art, pictures, photographs, charts, sculptures, diagrams, music, and sound recordings.
What cannot be copyrighted are:
- Facts and numbers
- Ideas that are not converted into tangible works
- Phrases and proverbs
- Names
- Short titles
If you have derived inspiration or have taken ideas from someone else’s work and have created your own original work based on the other’s work, then such material also cannot be copyrighted by you and will belong to the creator of the original piece of work.
If you work for someone and have been paid for creating content for them, the rights of which were purchased beforehand, then such material is considered to belong to your employer and you cannot claim copyright for such work.
Legal Infringement of Copyright Law and Fair Use
You can use or copy copyrighted material if you have permission from the owner of such material or they have licensed the material to you for use. Another way of using copyrighted material is through Fair Use.
Fair Use is a doctrine that has been established whereby you are allowed to use copyrighted material without taking the owner’s permission under certain circumstances. These are:
- If you want to criticize or ridicule the work
- If you want to use parts of it in research
- If you need to use copyrighted works for teaching and in education
The Fair Use Rule, however, can be very complex and it can be very confusing to know what constitutes fair use. So the best thing to do if you ever want to use any copyrighted material is to ask for the required permission so that you do not end up in violation of the U.S. Copyright Law.
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