Video Transcript
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Hey, it’s Gary Schuster, your friendly neighborhood inventor and innovator, and this is Innovation Cafe. And today I just want to talk about copyrights. Now, we’ll look at US copyrights, but for the most part, most of the big economies are similar. Um in the US, a copyright arises the minute your work is fixed in a tangible medium. Meaning, when you’re sitting at a table in a restaurant and you doodle a picture on the cocktail napkin, you immediately have a copyright in that picture. You just do. It’s it’s automatic. You no longer have to do anything with the government to have a copyright. In order to enforce the copyright, you do have to register it. So, you can register it after it’s been infringed, in which case, depending on how long you took before registering it, you may still be able to get what’s called statutory damages, which means you don’t have to prove your actual harm from someone infringing your copyright. You just get a set amount of money that the you know, US government sets out in US code. Um
if you haven’t registered it on time, you get your actual damages. So, there’s some advantages to registering with the US Copyright Office. It’s fast, it’s quick, it’s easy. Anyone can do it. You don’t need a lawyer except in extraordinarily complicated circumstances. So, go ahead. Enjoy your copyrights. You have them on everything you have ever fixed in a tangible medium, unless it’s a work made for hire, in which case it’s owned by the person who hired you to do it. If they used the right kind of contract. So, this has been Gary Schuster, your friendly neighborhood inventor, Innovation Cafe. Thank you so much for watching. Go ahead, give me a like, give me a subscribe, and tune back in for another quick definition.