John, your implication that a notice is necessary for protection is outdated. Since the US signed the Berne convention 20 (?) years ago, copyright has inured to the author of a creative work simply from the act of "fixing it in a tangible medium" (i.e., writing it down). And yes, there is a specific ruling that keying something into a text editor is in fact fixing it in a tangible medium. No copyright notice is necessary.
What is NOT "fixing it in a tangible medium"? Dancing a dance or playing a song are the two classic examples. If I make up a song and sing it to you I do not own the copyright, but if I write the song down, I do. Copyright notice does have a benefit; it helps to preclude a defense of inadvertent infringement. Copyright registration, a simple and economical e-process, also has benefits, but it is not strictly necessary to copyright protection. The benefits go beyond the obvious proof of who did what when. The law provides specific remedies that are available for registered copyrights as opposed to unregistered copyrights. There is a lot of general confusion on copyrights. Copyright protects creative expression. Copyright does not protect "content." If I discovered a nifty new sort algorithm and wrote code to implement it, my expression of the algorithm in a particular sequence of computer instructions (even if paraphrased, such as from Z to Intel assembler) would be protected by copyright, but the method of sorting would not. Anyone else would be free to implement their own code that used the same sorting algorithm. Charles -----Original Message----- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of John Gilmore Sent: Saturday, January 12, 2013 5:18 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: OT: IBM #1 in number of patents for 2012. It's 20th year in a row to do so. Graham, I think you would be safe; but, as I imagine you know, the phrase 'to copyright' is ambiguous. If you simply put C copyright 2013 by Graham Hobbs on a piece of software, taking no further action, you are in principle afforded full protection. In practice, however, you are in a weaker position than you would be in if you registered a copy of your software appropriately for your jurisdiction. In the first case all of the usual questions---Who did what to whom? In what order?---are open to litigation; in the second case, they are usually not. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
