Protecting your work

You can protect your ownership rights by doing two things, affixing a copyright notice ("Copyright, Year of Publication, Your Name") to each work and registering your work with the Register of Copyright, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. 20559. The notice tells anyone who wishes to reproduce the work where to get permission and mini­mizes the possibility that an infringer can claim not to know the work was copyrighted. The notice is no longer a requirement for copyright protection, but it's a good idea to put it on your work.  Registration within 90 days of publication allows you to claim dam­ages and other remedies under the law.  If you register later you can still sue an infringer but you will only be entitled to an order barring further infringement and monetary damages accruing after you registered the work.

The benefits of registering your copyrights are significant. It costs $20 to register a work, but under most circumstances you can register multiple works at a time using Form GR/CP as well as the appropriate form for each work included. You only pay one registration fee for the group.

In the absence of a written agreement to the contrary, a publisher of a periodical generally owns all of the material prepared by its em­ployees in the course of their normal work. Such work is called a "work made for hire."

But if the publisher hires a freelancer or out­side contractor to write material, take pic­tures, write music or create other copy­rightable work, it doesn't automatically own the work. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that the "work for hire" doctrine applies to such contractors only in very limited circum­stances.  Therefore, the publisher must obtain a written transfer of the copyright from the creator of that work.  The publisher may in­clude language making the transfer in a letter of agreement or written contract with the out­side source, as long as the source must sign the document, signifying agreement to its terms.

A freelancer who verbally agrees to do an ar­ticle, and who receives no written contract from the publisher can send a letter of under­standing to the publisher explaining what rights are being given. In the absence of such a written agreement, U.S. courts generally will conclude that the author sold First North American Serial Rights.