All About Copyrights by Pam White
***While this article is to help writers understand copyright
laws, it is not legal advice. Please visit the U.S. Copyright
website for more information, and call an attorney when legal
advice is needed.
Writers, new and established, need to understand copyright
laws. Writers must have a clear understanding in order to
protect their own creative endeavors, as well as to avoid
violating someone else's copyrights. I've found it helpful
also to be able to educate others' misconceptions about
rights concerning works "published" online or in listservs.
Copyright laws go back to 1789 when the U.S. Constitution was
written. Authors of creative works were protected in order to
encourage the continuation and growth of creative arts. It's
no different now. What you create is protected the minute you
put it down on paper. You don't have to register it, add a
copyright symbol (c) to it, or have it published. You don't
have to package each essay up in an envelope and send it to
yourself certified mail to prove when you created it.
That's the good news. And yet, the reality is that it's
difficult to prove authorship in a court of law unless you've
sent a copy to the U.S. Copyright Office, according to their
requirements. And that is important. If you are sued, or you
find your work has been used without permission, you need to
have that proof. The law is that if you have registered your
work with the U.S. Copyright office three months prior to
taking legal action, you may receive attorney's fees as well
as statutory damages. In fact, you have to have your work
registered before pursuing legal action against an
infringement of your work.
What does this mean for you, practically speaking? You've
decided to write an essay about the wonderful ways tofu helps
ease the symptoms of menopause. You tell a writer friend. She
sends out a query letter to Woman's Day, has it accepted and
gleefully shares this information while you are still
interviewing dieticians and developing recipes. At this
point, no laws have been broken. Why? There are things that
cannot be copyrighted:
Works that are not in a fixed format, such as improvisational
speeches on the wonders of tofu.
- Titles, names, short phrases, listings of ingredients or
contents.
- Ideas, procedures, methods, concepts, principles.
- Works that are made up only of common information, such as
calendars, tape measures, height and weight tables.
You, as author, cannot copyright any work that is considered
a work for hire. If you were employed by a company and your
job included developing recipes for the company (whether a
magazine publisher or food manufacturer), the recipes are
owned by the company, not you. Your employer can use them as
originally planned for advertising then put them together in
a cookbook, publish them online and allow other cookbook
publishers to include any or all of the recipes in a separate
book.
If you have signed a contract assigning all rights to a
publisher then you may not copyright that article, essay,
recipe or group of recipes, or book manuscript. This means if
you've sold an article to a magazine that requires a contract
giving them all rights, you may not resell that article or
include those recipes, as written, in a compilation or other
articles.
Let's go back to the example. You are flipping through a
natural health magazine and read an article on the positive
effects of soy on menopausal women. This is fascinating. You
want everyone to know about this, even mainstream magazine
readers. You take notes on the article, lift out some quotes,
and copy down the recipes. Wow, you think. This magazine has
handed you an article for little effort.
You blew it. Not only is the magazine in its entirety
copyrighted by the publisher, the writer of the article has
his own copyright protection.
Last try. Start over. You read the article and wish to do
something on the idea of soy helping women's hot flashes (or
power surges, depending on your outlook) for your local
newspaper's food section. The idea of soy being helpful is
not copyrighted. The idea of including soy recipes is not
copyrighted. You can take those two bits and start your own
research, calling a local macrobiotic expert for an interview
and create three or four of your own recipes. You could (if
you lack imagination) take another person's recipes and
rewrite the instructions for preparing the dish. Remember the
list of ingredients is not copyrighted; the preparation of
the dish is. And it does not matter how many times the recipe
has appeared online or in print. Once a writer puts it on
paper, he or she has the right to authorship.
Now you're cooking. So, what can be copyrighted?
Copyright protects original works:
Fiction and non-fiction articles, books, essays published in
print and online.
Compilations of articles and essays
Compilations of recipes
And what does the copyright protection entail? Your work
cannot be photocopied. Works of a derivative nature cannot be
published. Copies of your work cannot be sold or given away.
Actually, they can if ,and only if, you give permission.
Permission given can be casual, as in an email that says,
"Sure, you may use my article on Six Ways to Break Into Food
Writing on your website as long as you include a link to my
website and newsletter." It can also be as a result of a
contract written and reviewed by lawyers on both sides.
The copyright categories are expansive, meaning that your
works are protected as soon as you write them down. In the
first example, if you had written the article itself and
emailed it to a friend who then sent it out as her own, you
are protected and can sue for financial damages due to
copyright infringement. There are also steps you can take to
keep even this from happening. At the end of an e-mail that
includes an essay on your first cooking experience that you
are sending to a critique group, you could include a
statement that this email in no way constitutes your
permission for the work to be copied or used in anyway. You
could simply include the copyright symbol or the word
"copyright" itself, the year, and your name: (c) 2003 Pamela
White.
Since your work is copyrighted the second your write it -
this article was copyrighted when I finished writing it, even
before it was edited - why bother to register your work with
the copyright office? The National Writers Union
(www.nwu.org) works to protect the rights of freelance
writers and they recommend that writers register their works
with the U.S. Copyright Office once a year. The
administrative work may be significant for writers, but the
fee is not. You can bundle all works within a 12-month time
frame in one copyright application. The fee is $30. Be sure
that you have retained rights and can legally copyright your
work. You may copyright published and unpublished work this
way. Copyrights last the life of the author plus 70 years.
Registration forms and more information are available at
www.loc.gov/copyright/ . You'll need two printed copies of
each original work you wish to copyright; no electronic
copies are accepted. Your package of registration form, check
and works go to the Library of Congress, Copyright Office,
101 Independence Ave., S. E., Washington, DC 20559-6000.
To qualify for copyright protection in the U.S., authors must
be a citizen or resident of the U.S. or a citizen or resident
of a country with which the U.S. government has a reciprocal
copyright agreement. International copyrights that would
automatically protect all works everywhere do not exist. The
Copyright Office has a publication on "International
Copyright Relations of the United States" that outlines which
foreign countries offer protection.
Copyright laws exist to protect and encourage original
creative works. As soon as you write your article, you own
the copyright to it. Registration of your written work with
the U.S. Copyright Office provides protection in a court of
law; your work must be registered in order to take someone to
court for copyright infringement.
********
Pam White is the editor of "Food Writing," and online newsletter,
and author of FabJob.com's "Become a Food Writer." She is also the
promotion and marketing director for Futures Mysterious Anthology
Magazine (www.fmam.biz), and the Busy Cooking Section Editor at
BusyParentsOnline.com . Visit her at
http://www.food-writing.com .
