What Rights Do You Have If You Have a Copyright?
If you are the author of a creative work, your common law rights begin from the time your work is set in fixed form. Registering your work with the U.S. Copyright Office, however, is a way to give copyrighted work the full measure of protection granted by federal law. Once your work is officially copyrighted, you are granted specific remedies against other parties who infringe on the exclusive rights granted to you. You also have a number of ways to curtail ongoing infringement and collect monetary damages from an infringer.
Other People Are Reading
-
Your Exclusive Rights
-
U.S. Copyright Law confers on an author what are known as "exclusive rights" during the life of your copyright, which is the duration of your life plus another 70 years; affter that, your work falls unto public domain. Copyright law defines your exclusive rights very clearly. You can make copies of your work, such as books, music CDs and film DVDs, and you can sell them to the general public for a profit. You alone have the exclusive right to prepare a derivative work based on your original. For example, you may want to write a sequel to your best-selling crime novel using the same characters and setting. You alone are permitted to perform your work or display it to the public. If your work of authorship is a sound recording, such as a song, you are permitted to perform it publicly through means of digital audio transmission. Anyone who violates your exclusive rights infringes on them. An infringer may be someone who makes bootlegged copies of your music CDs and sells them for his own profit or someone who copies your work and tries to pass it off as his own.
Rights as a Joint Author
-
Joint authors of a copyrighted work have the same exclusive rights as a sole author. However, law makes certain provisions that refine the duties of co-authors to each other. Any author of a joint work has the right to grant a nonexclusive right to a third party who wants to use the work; however, the same author cannot grant a third party exclusive rights without the agreement of the other author(s), and this agreement must be in writing. Protection of a jointly-authored work endures for 70 years after the death of the last living author.
-
Right to Transfer, Rent, Lease or Lend
-
Anyone who has a copyright has the statutory authority to will it to an heir, just as he would other property, granting said heir the same exclusive rights enjoyed by the original author. But an author can also rent, lease or lend his copyrighted work. A common time this happens is when an author grants another party a nonexclusive or exclusive license to the work. For example, when a musician signs a contract with a major recording label, he grants the label exclusive rights to a particular recording of his copyrighted work, while retaining his right to perform his own music. As compensation for this licensing agreement, the musician receives royalties from the sale of the work, or whenever it's broadcast on the radio.
Right to Sue for Infringement
-
U.S. Copyright Law grants authors of creative work to bring a federal lawsuit against anyone who infringes on their exclusive rights. While a number of punitive measures can be applied to proved infringers, usually, an author's first order of business is to get the court to order an injunction against the infringer to cease the activity, such as preventing that person from making any more bootlegged copies of the work. Also, if you are the author, you can request that the court seize the infringing copies during the course of the proceeding. If infringement is proved, the copies ultimately may be destroyed.
Right to Collect Damages
-
Copyright holders are allowed to collect monetary awards from infringers if the author prevails in court. U.S. Copyright Law allows the author to choose from actual damages, if he can show that the infringement affected his gross earnings, or to claim statutory damages. Statutory damages for an act of infringement of one piece of work are no less than $750 and no more than $30,000. However, if willful infringement is shown--if the infringer continued to infringe despite a court order or a "cease and desist" letter from the author--the amount of statutory damages claimed can be as high as $150,000. Additionally, the court may award the author court costs and reasonable attorney's fees.
-
