What Is A Copyright?
A copyright is a right to reproduce a creative work. This means something that you have created by exercising an amount of your skill in order to create it. For example, if you just wrote the letter “A” on a piece of paper, that is probably not something that you could copyright. If you wrote several letters in a certain order and they had an amount of skill involved in arranging them, then that could be copyrighted. Other things can be copyrighted like videos, sounds, recordings, computer screen printouts, and a whole number of other things. Importantly, you don’t need to register your copyright to have protection, all you need to do is create it. As soon as you create it, you have the copyright in it. You also don’t have to put that little © at the bottom of the page, which everybody does, it’s entirely unnecessary. Once you have created something, you can stop others from copying it.
What Can You Do If Someone Infringes Your Copyright?
If someone infringes on your copyright you can go to them and demand that they both:
a) Stop copying it.
b) Give you the money that they’ve made as a result of their copying it.
So if somebody copies a video that you’ve made and puts it on YouTube and gets advertising revenue from it, you could sue that person for that advertising revenue. In order to sue them for copyright infringement, you would bring a claim in Small Claims Court or Supreme Court, depending on how much money is involved. Should you plan on taking a copyright infringement case to court, we highly recommend you hire a lawyer to do this.
We can also help you license your copyrighted works to others, or license copyrighted works from others for use in your own work, such as film, music, or other artistic works.
If you have been notified by your internet service provider that you have infringed copyright, we can give you advice on what to do.
Should you need legal representation, contact me, or contact our team of lawyers at ATAC Law today!
