Talk:Copyright notice

The use of "(c)" as a substitute for a "c" enclosed in a circle.
It's my understanding (from the corporate lawyers at a previous job) that the three-character sequence "(c)" or "(C)" has no standing in US copyright law. This should perhaps be mentioned on this page, but "my understanding" is not a strong enough reference, so I'm hoping someone knows of one... — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jfriedl (talk • contribs) 17 February 2011


 * Courts were actually all over the place on this issue. In general, courts were typically reluctant to divest a copyright owner of copyright based on a formality as long as the "(c)" had sufficient context to indicate that it was intended to assert a copyright (and could not be confused with, for example, a section heading a la (a), (b), (c), etc.).


 * The Copyright Office's original Compendium of Copyright Office Practices, which you can see here, specifically allowed it; see section 4.2.2.III (page 123 of the PDF): "A variant of the symbol © will be acceptable only where it resembles the © closely enough to indicate clearly that the copyright symbol is meant." The Compendium then includes "(c)" as an example of an "acceptable variant." TJRC (talk) 20:42, 29 March 2013 (UTC)

Requirements in other countries
I'm deleting the assertion that there are 20 foreign countries that require copyright notice. For one thing, as far as I can tell, it's wrong; the U.S. was pretty unusual in its former copyright notice requirement. For another, its supported only by a book that is actually about medical devices, and while I assume that the book is probably a reliable source when it's talking about medical devices, I think the author is, to put it politely, outside his comfort zone when he is trying to discuss copyright law.

I suspect the author's misunderstanding stems from one of two things. the first may be adherence to the now-dead Buenos Aires Convention, which conditioned international recognition of copyright on including the talisman "All Rights Reserved". Eighteen countries were party to that, which is close enough for his "some 20 foreign counties" figure. Another thing he may have been looking at is a list of countries who has signed onto the Universal Copyright Convention (which allowed, but did not require, signing countries to implement a copyright notice requirement) but had not signed the Berne Convention, which disallowed the requirement.

In any event, given the lack of specificity in the cited source, and that extraordinary claims should have extraordinary support, I am deleting this statement.

This also came up a couple years ago in the Copyright article. See here. The only editor who wanted to keep it was, who misunderstood the WP:RS policy and was ultimately permanently blocked for repeated copyright violations; and who had copied that cite here. TJRC (talk) 00:14, 30 March 2013 (UTC)

Suggest making this expressly about notice under U.S. law (and renaming accordingly)
As noted by TJRC, the U.S. appears to be fairly unusual in the importance (prior to implementation of Berne treaty) it places on the copyright notice. There's a lot to say about U.S. copyright law on this issue. If there is something to say about notice under the copyright law of other countries, that information would probably be better suited to a separate article (or articles) anyway. Article could be renamed "Copyright notice (U.S. law)" Federalist51 (talk) 03:09, 5 December 2014 (UTC)


 * I have no objection to making the U.S. law connection more clear. However, it should not be renamed with the parenthetical.  That is only done to resolve disambiguity.  See WP:PRECISION.  As long as this is the only article about copyright notice (and it is), its title should remain "copyright notice".  If other articles are created that discuss copyright notices of other jurisdictions, thereby introducing a need for disambiguation, it would probably still be inappropriate to rename it, as this article is pretty certain to remain the primary topic.  But that's a discussion better held if and when necessary, if other articles get created. TJRC (talk) 04:18, 5 December 2014 (UTC)
 * That makes sense to me. I wouldn't have even thought of this issue were it not for the hatnote suggesting that the article could be improved by including examples and perspectives reflecting "a worldwide view of the subject,"  Federalist51 (talk) 20:27, 5 December 2014 (UTC)

Use of a year range
So, is the use of a range of years in a notice "incorrect"? It would be great to shed some light on this, and clarify what happens if one does use a range (which is very common, for instance, in program source code). 82.48.123.28 (talk) 22:16, 6 December 2020 (UTC)
 * "Incorrect" isn't necessarily the right word, but a date range doesn't mean anything special. Because copyright is currently determined by the lifetime of the author, the date on a copyright notice doesn't actually indicate anything about the copyright. Additionally, in the source code example, it's important to remember that each revision of the code creates a new, derivative version of the work. That's what's meant by writing, e.g., (c) 2000-2020 in the code. That is, the original version of the code is still (c) 2000, and the latest revision is, separately, (c) 2020 even though that generally doesn't mean anything special under the current system. It can get kinda philosophical, especially when you consider whether or not the specific revision to the copyrighted work is sufficiently creative to be copyrightable in its own right. I'm not sure how it could be covered well in this article, but maybe. lethargilistic (talk) 14:06, 8 December 2020 (UTC)