Law Pointers

Anyone who is a writer is concerned with plagiarism. Copyright Laws protect copyright holders from having their works plagiarized. The word plagiarism is derived from the word “kidnapper” in Latin. If a person uses another person’s words without permission, they have stolen or kidnapped something owned by somebody else. This violates copyright law. Plagiarism is a menacing word in the writing world. Crediting the author of the work will not keep someone immune from violating copyright law. Plagiarism is plagiarism.

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When you write down a story, poem, song, lyrics, software, computer program or paint or sculpt something, you can create a copyright from your work. Copyrights allow the owner of the work to keep others from using it without the owner’s permission. Copyright protects the “expression of an idea”, but not the idea itself. For example, a copyright can protect a specific story about a dog going to the moon, but can’t copyright info about animals in space.

Copyrights must meet 3 criteria:

1. Must be original.
2. Must be expressed on paper, audio or videotape, computer, clay or canvas.
3. Must be creative to some degree – you can’t copyright a static list.

Frequently asked questions about copyrights:

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When you hear about people caught of copyright infringement, many different things can happen to them. First, copyright infringement is both a civil and criminal crime, so people caught of copyright infringement are likely to get both sued and tried in criminal court. Because of the nature of copyright laws, if and when people are caught of copyright infringement, it’s likely they will get repercussions from far and wide.

People are always looking for others violating copyright laws. Copyright owners and/or agents surf the Internet, so they may find the violations themselves. Usually, if someone finds a person violating their copyright rights, they’ll notify the person or entities involved and ask they permanently remove the content, if it’s available on the Internet. They do this by either asking the person directly to take it down, or demanding the website server to take it down (which they will, immediately, and probably suspend the account). If the person or entity hosting the violation doesn’t take it down, more serious actions will be taken, such as a lawsuit or criminal charge.

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Patents and copyright laws give the inventor the exclusive rights to the invention. No one else can produce the invention for a set period of time under patent and copyright law. Patents and copyright laws are set up to protect inventors. The law on patents can be found in the United States Constitution, Article 1, Section 8 and in Title 35 of the United States Code.

The agency in charge of patent laws is a Federal Agency known as the Patent and Trademark Office. Anyone who applies for a patent will have their application reviewed by an examiner. The examiner will decide if a patent should be granted to the inventor. Individuals who have their patent application turned down can appeal it to the Patents Office Board of Appeals.

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Copyright lawyers deal with many different subjects such as Internet law, intellectual property, patents and trademarks, and of course, your copyright laws. Each lawyer has attended school for some time to get a degree to help you, which means they know more about the law than you do.

Some mistakes website owners make is when they buy articles online; many times a buyer assumes they have full copyright. This isn’t always the case, depending on the agreement of ownership. To make sure you don’t fall into this trap, you should have a lawyer create a contract before you hand over any money; this way you know for sure if you have full ownership or if the writer does. You have three different categories you may purchase an article: usage, full, and unique. A copyright lawyer will explain exactly what each one means. Usage means the buyer gets to use the article one time, but the writer can use it again or resell it. Full rights will give the buyer all rights; they can even place their name on the article, saying they wrote it.

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