Copyright Licensing Form - Different Types of Licenses

With a copyright licensing agreement, you retain control over your intellectual property -- your name remains the copyright holder. You're simply licensing the use of the material to someone else, for whatever length of time and with whatever restrictions and requirements that you decide on. Here, we look at different ways licenses can work to protect you and your intellectual property.

There are some situations where licensing is commonly used. If you're a songwriter, for example, you could license your song to a specific artist in exchange for, say, a flat fee plus a percentage of the artist's royalties for that song. You remain in control -- the artist does not have the rights to allow another artist to perform that song.

An example of a restricted license would be licensing a song to a movie company with the stipulation that they use the song only during the movie, and not in any promo material or movie trailer. You have the right to specify exactly how your song is to be used -- or not used.

Not all licenses involve the transfer of money. For example, a software developer might make his or her software available with a free license, but he or she may specify how the software is to be used. These licenses with requirements that are not financial in nature are just as legally binding as those that require money; there have been many successful lawsuits brought by software developers who have provided their software for free with certain stipulations, such as the requirement to attribute the software to the creator or the requirement that the code is used in full, against users who have ignored those requirements.

Perhaps one of the most forgiving types of licenses is the Creative Commons license and its many varieties; with a Creative Commons license, you do not have to grant individual licenses to your users. A Creative Commons license allows anyone to use your work, provided they attribute the work to you or your organization in the manner that you specify. There are other aspects of use that you can also control -- allowing or disallowing your song or image to be transformed, for example.

The main thing to keep in mind is that a Creative Commons license is permanent. Even if you withdraw the license later, anyone who has obtained your work under the Creative Commons license may continue to use it according to the terms of the license for perpetuity.

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Types and Consequences of Copyright Infringement

By simply reproducing or syndicating the creations of a copyright owner without the permission to do so, you'll probably be ignoring his or her legal rights as stated in the Copyright Act. To enable a copyright to be enforced, it must be registered with the United States Copyright Office, plus a complaint explaining the encroachment has to be lodged by the federal court.

A judge can issue an injunction to permanently cease any sort of efforts it views as infringement. This will prevent the offending person or entity from sustained use of or money from acts of copyright infringement. A court can also issue a temporary injunction to counteract some other act of infringement while the court makes the final ruling on whether encroachment has happened.

At any moment over a copyright infringement case, the judge can request the impounding of content that could be perceived as encroaching on a copyright. Law enforcement agents will the be able to seize all of the copies of the offending products in addition to the initial designs from which more copies can easily be produced. With a finding of infringement, a court can demand that the seized items get removed or eliminated.

If the copyright holder has recorded the effort through the United States Copyright Office ahead of the infringement, the copyright holder may sue for reimbursement. This might include damages that include lost sales and profits due to the infringement or legal fines between $250 to $150,000 for each and every copy. Even bigger payments may be awarded based upon the circumstances of your case, and the public popularity of the copyrighted content.

You can also be considered criminally responsible if you purposely reproduce copyrighted content for profit, or if the replicated original carries a worth of greater than one-thousand dollars. In these cases, implications range from a one-year jail term plus fines. If the worth is greater than $2,500, you're likely to be obligated to fulfill 5 years in prison plus fines. Jail fees and penalties mostly apply to far-reaching instances of video or music piracy, but any instance of copyright violation should be given serious attention, for the reason that final results are often serious. Consult a knowledgeable copyright law firm for answers to your queries or for representation.

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Copyright Registration? Why Bother?

Recently a client asked me whether he should register an an article he is publishing in a trade journal with the the U.S. Copyright Office. He explained that he had heard that copyright protection is automatically granted when the material is created, so he was wondering if there were any additional benefits to registering it. I explained that under the current law, works of authorship that are "fixed in a tangible meaning of expression" are automatically protected under copyright laws, but that registering the material does provide added protection and benefits.

For starters, if the work is registered within five years of its first publication, it is considered prima facia evidence (an automatic presumption of truth) that the copyright is valid. Also, if a work is registered within three months after its publication or prior to an infringement of the work, the copyright owner may be able to recover attorneys fees incurred in prosecuting the infringement plus an award for statutory damages as set by law as an alternative to actual damages and lost profits. If the work is not registered, the copyright owner may be able to recover actual damages and lost profits, but proving such damages can be difficult. Statutory damages, which are set by the court, can be anywhere from $750 to $30,000, and if the infringer is determined to have willfully infringed on the owner's copyrights then the court can award up to an additional $150,000. Therefore, having the option of receiving statutory damages can be beneficial when proving actual damages or lost profits will be difficult.

On the other hand, if you do not register your work, then you are limited to whatever actual damages and lost profits you can prove. Whether you register or not, the court can stop the other party from any further infringement activities, including requiring the other party to destroy any tangible items or marketing materials they may have that might infringe on your rights, but you cannot recover your attorney's fees and you will not have the option of requesting the statutory damages.

Copyright registration is very inexpensive and easy to do. The fee is only about $25.00 and registration can be completed online. Taking this extra step can be the difference between spending thousands of dollars to protect your property, money you will never get back, and stopping the infringement at the expense of the infringer.

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