Copyrighting

I do copyright like this (copy of the back of my title page):

Copyright © 2020 Cathleen Townsend
All rights reserved.

Published by Phoenix Flight Press

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.


Cover art by Deranged Doctor Design


My understanding is that at least in the US, your intellectual property is protected under copyright laws as soon as it's finished. What you're doing on the back of your title page is merely declaring it.

Trademark, OTOH, requires a registration process and fees, and they aren't cheap.

I am not a lawyer, but I believe the difference between the two is something like: Copyright makes sure you can continue to use your own ideas. Plagiarism of copyright-protected material is illegal. Trademark registers a certain specific idea, and only the person/entity with the trademark can use it. That explains the whole bit with Prince (the pop star). He became The Artist Formerly Known as Prince, not because he was pretentious, but because his record label had trademarked his name, and once he left them, he couldn't use it anymore.

I can't tell you much more about trademarking because I haven't done it. Most authors settle for copyright.

Copyright is creative works, while trademarks are commercial things. For example, you use Adobe Photoshop™ to digitally enhance an image, your phone connects to your speaker usingBLUETOOTH® (their lawyers get so mad if you ever screw up BLUETOOTH® on your website/ad/packaging/etc). The reason why Adobe loses it when you say "I photshopped the image" is because when you use it outside of the brand guidelines and "genericize" the term it loses the trademark, and then anyone can call a thing photoshop, which is why the jingle is "I am stuck on BAND-AID brand and BAND-AID is stuck on me!" People have said dry ice, aspirin, trampoline and even heroin so much it lost the trademark and is now a generic term.

Your book probably is not a brand so there is no benefit to trademarking it. Warner Bros has trademarked "WIZARDING WORLD" in reference to Harry Potter stuff, so they own the trademark to WIZARDING WORLD and put it on the candy and games and shirts and other junk. Meanwhile JKR owns the copyright to HP/Fantastic Beasts/Pottermore/the stage play publishing and theatrical copyrights, while Warner Bros own the copyrights to the HP and Fantastic Beasts characters, names "and related indica" as well as the trademarks on them. The name "Harry Potter" in, itself, is a brand, but the rights to the original creative work (the text) still belongs to JKR since she made it, while Warner owns the copyright to the films/games since they made them. It's this big complicated thing since billions are made off of these works and they don't want Some Guy selling Harry Potter shirts in a gas station parking lot. But at the end of the day, the copyright of the books belong to JKR and that's what keeps people from doing nefarious things with it. You're going to want copyright, not trademark, but if you ever do, you need a real lawyer to help you out with it.

Of course this is assuming you're talking about America, who knows how it works in other countries (not me).

Indeed; your copyright is valid the moment you publish the book. All you have to do is put in a copyright page that shows the name of the book, followed by the copyright symbol and the year of first publication, and your name.

No, your copyright is valid the very second you put words to paper. It doesn't even have to be published to enforce the copyright but registering it entitles you to more significant damages if you file for violation.

BenPanced said:

No, your copyright is valid the very second you put words to paper. It doesn't even have to be published to enforce the copyright but registering it entitles you to more significant damages if you file for violation.

Click to expand...

To get technical, copyright is valid for anything "fixed in a tangible medium of expression", which can mean a lot of things. It's good to have it in a published form with a copyright notice that lists the year of publication, though, for the sake of having something that will stand up in court.

As I understand things, unpublished paper/computer/other records can be sufficient evidence of copyright and would 'stand up in court' if needed.

micahkolding said:

To get technical, copyright is valid for anything "fixed in a tangible medium of expression", which can mean a lot of things. It's good to have it in a published form with a copyright notice that lists the year of publication, though, for the sake of having something that will stand up in court.

Click to expand...

Technically, everything that you wrote in this post is copyrighted to you as soon as you typed it. There's no need to register it for it to be yours, if you decided you wanted to protect it for some reason. The only thing registering copyright really does is increases the amount of money you can sue for in court if someone steals your work. The problem is, most people who are going to steal your work, they aren't going to have any assets that you can go after.

You don't have to postpone releasing your book until after registering copyright, but it's probably good to take care of it within a year of release. It's not a long or difficult or expensive process, and can all be done on-line. Also, yes, Cephus is correct about the benefits of registration. I always do it anyway, just because it's kind of neat to receive that certificate in the mail.