The Basics of Copyright Law

Copyright laws basically grant intellectual property rights and ownership to the creators of non-tangible items such as novels, music, website content and more. It can be applied to anything online – text, art, graphics, photos and music. This can also include software.

Copyright law gives the owner of the material five basic rights. These rights are:

• Reproduction Rights – Only the owner can determine who has the right to duplicate the work.
• Modification Rights – Only the owner has the right to modify the original to create a new work. An example of modification to a preexisting work is if you were to alter a photograph. Unless you own the rights to that photo, you could be in copyright violation.
• Distribution Rights – This concerns the right to distribute copies of the work, whether by selling them or giving them away. This is especially relevant to software developers who make their living by creating and selling software.

These three rights are the most important rights concerning software developers and licensing. The other two rights covered under copyright law are:

• Public Performance Right – Involving the right to perform the material (such as a song or script) to the public.
• Public Display Right – Similar to the Public Performance Right, this right involves displaying any images or video clips to the public.

If you work as a software developer, anything you create is solely yours to distribute and reproduce under copyright law. When you choose to grant permission to others to use the software or reproduce it – by installing it on another computer, for example – you are granting them license. When clients purchase software, they are generally purchasing licenses, not the actual ownership of the software. The ownership still belongs to you, the creator.

A great example of this is purchasing the Microsoft Office Suite for your office. If you have five computers that need the Microsoft Suite, you will purchase five licenses. This will allow you to install the Microsoft Suite up to five times.

For more information on copyright law, read this detailed explanation from contract and legal document experts, Contract Edge.

Website Privacy Policy

Clients and end users (third party users) of your website will feel more comfortable if your site has a privacy policy ensuring them that their private information will remain private. Nowadays, most visitors to your website consider a privacy policy a standard that cannot be ignored by the website handling their information.

A privacy policy is important to assuring third party users of your site’s credibility, but it is also an integral part of protecting your site and your business from any legal issues that might arise. A privacy policy allows you to express your rights as the owner of a website. Privacy policies explain your copyright and trademark permissions. Privacy policies also express the reasonable limitations of the content you host on your website. In short, privacy policies show third party users that you have taken the proper steps to ensure the protection of all the data that is contained or transferred on your site.

Protecting Your Intellectual Property – Tips for IT Developers

Intellectual property, or “IP“, is the heart and soul of the tech field.

• How do you protect your intellectual property?
• Do I need to protect myself?

These are two of the most important questions you can ask yourself.

Keep Detailed Records
It is important to take an inventory of your assets. Find all of the software, instruction manuals, promotional materials, published material and web content you have produced. Once you have accounted for all of your content, make sure to date it all. There are time limits on protecting yourself from suspected copycats. These time limits are usually five to six years, depending on the type of content you are defending. That is why it is important to protect your content before the fact and also why it is important to keep track of publication dates.

File for Appropriate Copyrights, Trademarks, etc.
Once you have all of your content dated, it is important to file the appropriate claims: copyright, trademark, trade secret, etc. To start this process it is important to use the appropriate legal forms.

Once you have filed and received confirmation that your content is protected, it becomes important to keep meticulous records. Develop your own recordkeeping system to track your content and make periodic updates to both your records and filings whenever you add new content or update your existing content.