The Importance of Protecting your Intellectual Property
If you are authoring anything at all right now… be it a screenplay, some original music, a piece of software, or anything else that falls under abstract principles, it is your intellectual property.
To define intellectual property in basic terms: If it is not say, a design for an actual, tangible, concrete thing like an invention, but it is the work of the imagination or the mind, then it is intellectual property.
If you hope to eventually put that intellectual property out into the world, be it through submitting that work to publishers, publishing it yourself, or just putting it on the internet for free, then you should probably do something to protect your ownership of that property.
In general, most publishing houses, for example, will not go around stealing manuscripts that aren’t copyright protected. The legal battles that would ensue just aren’t really worth it, for even the most unscrupulous publisher. It’s cheaper to buy the publishing rights fair and square than it is to rip someone off and defend yourself in court and possibly pay a lot of money in fines.
However, it does happen. If a publisher does not directly steal a manuscript, there have been occasions where a publisher will read a manuscript, and hire a ghost writer to write a different version of the story, without ever informing or paying the original author, from whose story the idea actually sprang.
The right way to go about protecting your work is to find a notary public. A notary public is someone who has given the power, but the courts, to be an official, legal witness to things like contract signings, wills, deeds, and, yes, intellectual property ownership.
Notary publics will usually charge a modest fee to look at your work and authenticate it as an original work, by you. There are notary publics all over the place, really, so between that and the low fees, there’s really no excuse not to go this route.
Your other option is to go for the “poor man’s copyright”, also known as the “by-mail copyright”. Doing this, the artist or author will put a copy of their work in an envelope and mail it directly to their own mailing address.
The way this process works is that, when the envelope goes through the US Mail system, it will be postmarked with a specific date. That date will usually hold up in court as evidence that you did, indeed, have a copy of this material well before somebody else claimed it to have been their own work. As long as you’ve left the envelope sealed, this should be sufficient proof.
However, it doesn’t always work like that. Indeed, it’s certainly possible for a skilled con-man to doctor an envelope to look as if it has never been opened, when in fact, he’s just opened an old envelope, stuffed a doctored copy of someone else’s work inside, and then resealed it.
Sometimes by-mail copyrighting will work, and sometimes it won’t. It depends on the judge, it’s really as simple as that.
In the US, by-mail copyright is usually recognized, but it’s not really recommended. In the UK, there are no mentions of by-mail copyright anywhere in the official literature regarding registering a copyright, except where it is recommended strongly against.
An actual, notary public authorized copyright is definitely preferred, but there are a few contexts where it might not be a realistic option. You could use the poor man’s copyright as a sort of emergency placeholder for a real, authentic, registered copyright in such events where a notary public cannot be reached, but you are already a bit worried that somebody is looking to steal your intellectual property. Or, you might be a little short on cash this week, and don’t want to put off sending your book out to publishers any longer.
Whatever the case, if you do resort to the poor man’s copyright, don’t rely on it for too long. Back it up with a notary public registered copyright as soon as possible. If you have a good, marketable, entertaining, or just plain funny book, comic, movie, or whatever on your hands, you have something that people want, something that could potentially earn you a comfortable living, if you play your cards right. Consider it an asset. Just as you would insure your home, a copyright is like insurance for intellectual property.
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