Copyright Law and Writing: What Every Writer Should Know

Guest post by Tori Lutz

Copyright laws can play a vital role in the safety and security of any written work.

Whether you’re looking to protect your private blog from plagiarism or prevent any unauthorized reprinting of your multi-million-dollar screenplay, copyrights will be at the top of your to-do lists. This can be for any number of reasons, but the general consensus is that copyrights provide writers and producers with a host of useful benefits that the free market just can’t provide.

This article will help you form a better understanding of what copyrights are, how they apply to your writing, the benefits they provide, and how to get them. At the end, we’ll even provide a detailed explanation of how to choose whether or not you really need a patent attorney to handle the process.

Copyright Laws Explained

Let’s start with a little bit of history.

Most people think that copyright laws are something new. For example, when do you think the laws were written that protected digital writing and software code from being stolen? You might say some time after 1989 with the invention of the World Wide Web, but the truth is that there have been copyright laws in the United States since long before the United States even existed.

Copyright laws began for the world in 1710, spread to the Americas with the colonists, and were enshrined in the United States Constitution in 1787 (with the first copyright law being passed in 1790).

Nowadays, much about those laws has been changed; however, the general theme remains the same. Copyright laws function by granting you a government-backed monopoly on the production and distribution of your writing as well as any changes you make to that work.

The Importance of Copyright Laws for Writers

In general, the benefits far outweigh the costs of getting a copyright for your work.

But what if you don’t want to copyright your work? That’s fine, too! In fact, tens of thousands of writers choose to forgo copyrighting their work each year. Unfortunately, the reason for this is a bit of a double-edged sword. 

While it’s true that anything you write is immediately protected by general-interest copyright laws, you lack many key privileges when you choose not to officially register your copyrights. For instance, if you choose to forgo securing a copyright for the book that you just wrote, somebody else who found the documents on your computer could theoretically get away with selling that draft without your consent.

Of course, you could still sue and you might win, but that “might” can be an extremely dangerous word, as any writer is well aware. Moreover, even if you do win your case, you likely won’t be able to recoup financial losses without an officially registered copyright in your name.

The Benefits of Copyrighting Your Work

There are three main benefits to securing your copyright: money, money, and more money.

It might seem materialistic to concern yourself with money or you might not even believe in the concept of money, but the fact remains that you cannot survive in our current society without it. Not to mention the fact that you deserve to be paid for your work just like anybody else with a so-called “real job.”

This increased revenue is made possible by the government-backed monopoly that copyright privileges extend to you. These monopolies, like the oil monopolies of the Industrial era, create artificial scarcity, which, in turn, enables you to drive the price up far and beyond what the natural market forces otherwise would have paid you for the production of your work.

Copyright laws are what enable writers to sue people for when they steal their ideas, regardless of whether or not the thief uses them better, more efficiently, or with lower costs. By copyrighting your work, you can increase your wealth at the expense of your competitors, killing two birds with one stone.

Copyright Requirements

In general, copyrights are far easier to obtain than patents and the copyright cost tends to come in anywhere from a few hundred dollars to tens of thousands of dollars below the average patent cost.

Fixation

The first requirement to qualify for a copyright is that your work must be fixed in a “tangible means of expression.” This means that your novel has to have already been written (whether on paper or digital). It does not necessarily have to have been printed, but it has to be physically real and more than just an idea. For example, an MP3 file is a “tangible means of expression” for a musician’s work.

Originality

If your work is seen as a copy of somebody else or so derivative as to legally fall into the category of the “next step in the evolution” of somebody else’s work, copyrighted or otherwise, you will not be able to secure a copyright for that piece of art.

Minimal Creativity

This requirement plays off of the Originality requirement. Essentially, your work can’t just be a boring, bland, obvious hunk of junk. If you want to copyright it, it has to have even a minimal semblance of creativity.

Is An Attorney Really Worth It?

It’s possible that you’re wondering if an attorney for something you’re already putting in hard work to understand yourself. Things like traffic law attorneys, medicare fraud defense attorneys, or criminal defense attorneys may seem more blatantly necessary… but what about patent attorneys for IP law? 

As J.D. Houvener, a Los Angeles patent attorney, once said, “Hiring an attorney to help with the copyright process involves paying a little extra to save a lot more.”

When it comes down to it, that’s exactly what the process entails. Although the copyright process is far simpler, cheaper, and easier for the layman to navigate than the patent, trademark, or trade secret processes, there is still a high risk of doing something incorrectly and having the U.S. Copyright Office deny your request.

Typically, you can get around this denial by tweaking your work and filing again, but how much time do you have? More importantly, how much money do you have? 

By hiring an attorney to nail the registration process in a single go, using their connections to expedite the review of the process, and handle all of the stress-inducing bureaucracy for you, you can save countless hours and thousands of dollars in the long run.

Conclusion

At the end of the day, every piece of art is different. That’s part of what makes it art! Of course, we don’t really have time to get into the question of “what is art,” but neither does the U.S. government (hopefully).

As long as you satisfy the three simple requirements of copyright law and hire an attorney to ace the registration and applications for you, your writing should be protected for as long as you need.

Note: This is not legal advice and should not be taken as such.

Want to become a successful freelance writer? Check this out.