Securing copyright

[woolyhead]

I read somewhere that if you send a copy of something you want to protect to yourself by recorded post and never open it, in the event that you need to prove the date when you wrote it, it would stand up in court as proof. Does anyonw know if that is a fact?

[loraward]

Poor man’s copyright’ and other solutions.

 

We are sometimes asked about alternatives to a registration with the UK Copyright Service. Historically there has been a lot of myth and assumption about copyright evidence, but it is precisely because of the poor provision of so called "alternatives" that this service was established.

 

The most commonly quoted other methods to establish evidence of copyright are to post a copy of the work to yourself, or to lodge a copy with your bank or solicitor. Both of these methods have flaws, explained below, when compared with UKCS registration, unfortunately they are still rather surprisingly widely quoted as solutions even today.

 

Post/envelope systems

 

Any system where you retain the evidence yourself is very weak as it provides no independent evidence, and means that a court or tribunal would only have your word that you actually placed the work in the envelope at the time of posting.

 

If you use the postal service (sometimes called ‘poor man’s copyright’), or any commercial system which requires you to store the work yourself, there is no evidence to say that the contents have not been swapped, or that you did not seal the envelope years later. It is so easy to cast doubt on such evidence, we believe it is next to worthless.

Lodging a copy with a bank or solicitor

 

Despite the professional nature of these establishments, copyright witnessing is not their main concern, and they are unlikely to understand the scale of the undertaking required to provide an adequate service.

 

Things that could go wrong include:

Data loss:

 

If your work was submitted in an electronic format, compact disc, DVD, or even stored on a PC/server, there is a risk of data corruption, which increases with time. The same principal applies to magnetic media - cassettes, video tapes, etc.

Disaster:

 

If your solicitor or bank’s premises either burn down, have a flood or similar problem.

Loss of evidence for future cases:

 

They are unlikely to provide duplication services, so if you use the evidence once, it will not exist to protect your work from future disputes.

 

In fact, we often receive work from solicitors who simply pass items onto the UK Copyright Service as they know that we have the proper facilities to deal with this type of undertaking.

Computer generated dates

 

Often people assume that because their computer adds a creation and modified date to files, that this is itself evidence of when the files were created.

 

This is not the case, it simply shows what time the computer thought it was. Faking such evidence is a simple case of changing the date back on the computers internal clock and creating the file. The file now has the new ‘fake’ date.

 

Please do not try this out, as this may cause some subscription licensed software programs to stop working.

 

See how we compare.

[Elphi 24]

I read somewhere that if you send a copy of something you want to protect to yourself by recorded post and never open it, in the event that you need to prove the date when you wrote it, it would stand up in court as proof. Does anyonw know if that is a fact?

 

I was told that at an Intellectual Property Office seminar I went to. Methinks post is above is an easy way for a company to make money ...

[andyofborg]

you automatically have the copyright on anything which is copyrightable which you create. if you are sharing your work with only one or two people and you feel that one of them may claim they wrote it then you might like to consider a more formal way of registering your copyright of the material

 

depending on what you are doing then there are other intellectual property protections, trademarks, patents etc which may be more appropriate.

[woolyhead]

Oh, I see. Well thanks everyone. How much does the UK Copyright service charge, approximately?

[Waldo]

I'd be suspicious of any advice relating to the effectiveness of alternative methods of copyright evidencing, given by a company who provides such a service. Their advice may well be valid, but they're hardly in a position to give impartial advice. Unless I've missed something?

[Cyclone]

I'd be suspicious of any advice relating to the effectiveness of alternative methods of copyright evidencing, given by a company who provides such a service. Their advice may well be valid, but they're hardly in a position to give impartial advice. Unless I've missed something?

 

They're selling a service aren't they, so they're pretty obviously going to tell you that you need it. (As you implied).

[woolyhead]

loraward, what did you mean "see how we compare"? Do you work for the UK Copyright service? If so, how much would it cost me to protect a story of 150,000 words worlwide, approximately.

Edited May 4, 2015 by woolyhead

[L00b]

I was told that at an Intellectual Property Office seminar I went to. Methinks post is above is an easy way for a company to make money ...

There's some self-serving elements (unsurprisingly), but much of it is on the ball. The IPO doesn't deal in copyright works, nor in their enforcement (expect in design or trademark inter partes proceedings, which are fairly rare - and in which the IPO Tribunal Section is 'the Court', and in which I can tell you that they disregard self-addressed envelopes just the same as the High Court and the others).

<...>Any system where you retain the evidence yourself is very weak as it provides no independent evidence, and means that a court or tribunal would only have your word that you actually placed the work in the envelope at the time of posting.

 

If you use the postal service (sometimes called ‘poor man’s copyright’), or any commercial system which requires you to store the work yourself, there is no evidence to say that the contents have not been swapped, or that you did not seal the envelope years later. It is so easy to cast doubt on such evidence, we believe it is next to worthless.

Entirely true, and borne out by UK case law.

Lodging a copy with a bank or solicitor

 

Despite the professional nature of these establishments, copyright witnessing is not their main concern, and they are unlikely to understand the scale of the undertaking required to provide an adequate service.

Self-serving and misleading. Whilst it is true that most banks and general practice solicitors won't be clued-up about copyright law, they are an independent third party (and, for legal professional, with an obligation of impartiality to their client) and can attest to the work and date of filing just the same as the "UK Copyright Service".

 

The two 'best' solutions for evidencing the date and subject-matter ('the work') in copyright(s) are:

 

(i) a specialist IP firm (which specialises in copyright and other forms of IP rights, must have a disaster-proof recordkeeping system and whose standard certification procedure for guaranteeing the date and subject-matter of the copyright is Courts-grade); and

 

(ii) the Library of Congress in the US (which is the only institution to operate a proper 'formal' type of recording for copyrighted work with a certificate, date and copy of the work, and the use of which the above "specialist IP firms" will recommend if the real or perceived or anticipated value of the copyrighted work makes a commercial case for it - it isn't cheap).

I'd be suspicious of any advice relating to the effectiveness of alternative methods of copyright evidencing, given by a company who provides such a service. Their advice may well be valid, but they're hardly in a position to give impartial advice. Unless I've missed something?

There's no (legal) advice required when 'registering' a copyright. As noted above, these guys have a bit of a sales patter running in the bit (presumably-) copy-pasted by loraward, but then they provide a commercial service. The service itself does not require 'advice', put in a nutshell it's a 'paying postbox' (-to the same extent as all of the other solutions).

 

The type of advice you're likely to require in relation to copyright will be about its extent, enforcement, selling, licensing, etc. - all of which should ideally be sought from a registered IP practitioner (who has a duty of impartiality).

Edited May 5, 2015 by L00b

[loraward]

loraward, what did you mean "see how we compare"? Do you work for the UK Copyright service? If so, how much would it cost me to protect a story of 150,000 words worlwide, approximately.

 

The "see how we compare" part of the quote is another link which can be accessed though the link I provided, and no I don't work for them or recommend them.