The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) lists three “special days”:

1. World Intellectual Property Day.  April 26 is a day to highlight creativity and innovation in all of our lives.  WIPO has press releases, posters, bookmarks and special publications to help member States celebrate this day.
2. World Book and Copyright Day.  The United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) designates April 23 as the day each year to promote the protection of written works and to recognize authors and their rights.
3. World Anti-Counterfeiting Day.  The Global Anti-Counterfeiting Group (GACG) selects a day at the end of June each year to raise the awareness and costs of counterfeiting and piracy.

Many governments and organizations promote and have appropriate activities on the “special days” set out above. Check out the links and get ideas for your Copyright Day.  Others ideas in a self study eCourse on copyright education. Start planning now for 2012 World IP Day or World Book and Copyright Day on April 26 and 23, respectively.

Your 2012 challenge-prioritize copyright this year with the following twelve suggestions.

Plan and Budget

1.    Consider your 2012 budget for permissions, licenses, and copyright training.  Consult various people in your organization to gather their needs and preferences.  Prepare a budget and ensure you have the funds and support you require to meet your copyright needs in 2012.

Assess your Copyright Knowledge

2.    Continue your own copyright education.  Do you need a refresher course on copyright?  Or perhaps a course on international copyright, web 2.0 copyright issues, copyright issues for librarians or for authors and publishers?  Register for an in-person or online course.

3.    Brainstorm ideas to get the copyright message to your colleagues.  A new poster in the lunchroom?  A copyright page on your intranet?  How about a weekly lunchtime discussion group on copyright issues? Include senior management, marketing and information professionals, lawyers, and others.

Review Licenses

4.    Check all licenses for electronic content to determine if any expired at the end of 2011.  Were any of these licenses subject to automatic renewal, and still valid in 2012?  Are any licenses now unintentionally lapsed?  Will you need to take any action to notify the vendor/content owner of your intention to renew or not renew a license?

5.    Prepare a database of all content your organization has licensed (see 11 below for content you own.) Whether it’s an image to use in your newsletter, computer software, or an electronic journal subscription, include all content in a single searchable database that allows you to quickly and easily locate that content and determine what rights you have in it.

6.    Do you need permission in 2012?  Generally, the duration of copyright expires at the end of each calendar year.  Determine if any of the works you want to use are in the public domain in 2012.

Compliance

7.    Develop a written copyright policy. If you do not already have one, first determine why you need one and how you would use it. If you have one, determine whether it is valuable and how you can improve or update it.  Have there been amendments to the Copyright Act?  What about court cases that affect how you use content?  Or does your organization now use digital content in a new way that needs to be addressed consistently throughout your organization?

8.    Do the same copyright questions arise again and again in your organization? Keep track of these questions.  Every time you have six new questions, prepare short written answers; consult a lawyer if necessary. Circulate these Qs & As to your colleagues or post them on an intranet.

Developments and Networking

9.    Consider how to use social networking to follow copyright developments.  Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn groups all provide interesting venues with copyright information as it happens, and a broad network of “copyright” people. Grow your copyright network.

Copyright Symbol and Protection

10. Review how you are protecting your own copyright-protected works from documents to images to podcasts and videos.  Although voluntary in most countries, using the universal copyright symbol, ©, is a reminder that copyright exists in a work.  Including contact information for permissions will direct people to you when they are seeking copyright permissions.

11. Undergo an audit of copyright works that you own. It’s also a great way to find out what IP you own and how to market and better profit from that IP. This is true for individuals and both small and large organizations.

12. Set up a mechanism for monitoring the legal use of your own online content on an international basis. This can be as simple as doing search engine searches, or you could hire a professional who specializes in finding unauthorized uses of content.  Piracy is not only the domain of the software and entertainment industries.  You may find surprises in how your individual or organization’s rights are being exploited and your works used, and perhaps even sold, without your permission.

Issues we will discuss include:

• background and composition of U.S. copyright law
• criteria for copyright protection (such as originality and fixation)
• what works are protected
• how to protect works (e.g., registration and copyright notice requirements)
• ownership and protection of rights
• copyright protection duration
• exploitation of rights
• copyright infringement and remedies.

This course will help the student think about his role in copyright through the courses in the Certificate in Copyright Management program which has 6 required online courses and 2 in-person courses. In addition to the interactive web sessions, there will be a discussion list and each student will begin her own checklist for copyright management and compliance taking into account domestic and global copyright, digital, library and author/publisher perspectives, and spreading the copyright message. You do NOT need to be in the Certificate program to take this or any of the courses. Each course in the Certificate program is a “stand-alone” course – pick a course or two which interests you!

Reasons for Using a Copyright Symbol

In general, a copyright symbol is a reminder to the world at large that copyright exists in the work.  It identifies the copyright owner and therefore may help people who want to use the work to locate the copyright owner and obtain permission to use it.  Also, it shows the work’s first year of publication.

Using a copyright notice does not require copyright registration of a work or any specific permission or rubber stamping.  In other words, do not assume that you can locate the copyright owner by searching the records of your country’s Copyright Office just because there is a copyright symbol on the work.

In countries like Canada and the U.S., the symbol is not mandatory however there are incentives to use it.  In Canada, use of the symbol provides evidence in a court action that the alleged violator should have known that copyright existed in the work.  In the U.S., use of the symbol precludes an alleged violator of copyright from submitting that he did not know that copyright existed in a work.  In the U.S., works published before March 1, 1989 were subject to different rules and the copyright notice was mandatory, though corrective steps cold be taken if it was omitted on a published work.

Elements in a Copyright Notice

There are three elements in a copyright notice.  First, the “c” in a circle, ©, or the abbreviation “Copr.” or the word “copyright” should be present.  Second, the name of the copyright owner (not necessarily the author) should be included in the notice.  Third, the year of first publication should be set out.  These elements need not necessarily appear in this sequence.  An example is:  © Mary Clark  2012 or Copyright © Mary Clark  2012

The year to include in a copyright notice should be the year of first publication of the work. First publication is when the work is made available to the public without restriction.  This includes selling a book or leaving free copies of it in a public place, but not sending sending copies of a book to a publisher or circulating copies internally to co-workers. For compilations or derivative works which incorporate previously published content, the year of first publication of the compilation or derivative work is sufficient.

New versions or editions of works should contain the publication date of the new version or edition. For constantly evolving websites and blogs that contain works published over several years, the notice may include a range of years (e.g., 2001-2012), starting from the date of the oldest published elements and ending with the date of the newest published elements.

A copyright symbol is not usually used on an unpublished work but may be used, and instead of year of publication, the year could be the year the author distributes the work in some manner.  The symbol could indicate this with the following wording:  Unpublished work © 2011 Mary Clark.

At least in the U.S., the year may be omitted from the copyright notice where a pictorial, graphic, or sculptural work, with or without text, is reproduced on greeting cards, postcards, stationery, jewelry, dolls, toys or any useful objects.

Placement of the Notice

The copyright notice should be clearly placed in a manner and location best suited to alert the user of the work in question to the fact that copyright subsists in the work.  This can vary depending on the type of work involved.  For a website, a suitable location for the copyright notice may be on the home page, or on a page that appears by clicking through to a specified copyright or legal notices page, or both.  For instance, website owners may include a simple copyright notice on its home page and perhaps on other pages of its website, with a click through to a more detailed copyright and legal notices page.  If you are looking for the copyright notice, go to the bottom of the home page and check the listed links for copyright notice or legal disclaimers, etc.

For works published in book form or periodicals, the notice could be placed on the title page, the page immediately following the title page, on either side of the front of back cover, or on the first or last page of the main body of the work.  The notice should be in a manner and location that is conspicuous and will not be missed by a casual observer.

The Sound Recording Symbol

Sometimes you see a p in a circle on a sound recording.  The p in a circle is used like the ©, but only with respect to sound recordings.  The reasons for marking a work with p in a circle are similar to those for marking a work with ©.  The notice should be placed on the label attached to the recording, or on the cover or container accompanying the recording, or both.

Copyright Warning/Information

In addition to a copyright symbol, some include a “copyright warning” or additional copyright-related information on any copyright-protected works.  The warning/information may be as simple as:

For requests to use this copyright-protected work in any manner, email  xxx@xxx.com or call xxx.xxx.xxxx.

More comprehensive copyright warning/information may refer to concepts like fair use and fair dealing, and may mention whether permission is required for non-profit and non-commercial uses of the work.  Most print publications and websites have some form of copyright warning/information and in determining what uses are permitted without further permission, read through this information.