[ANSTHRLD] Copyright stuff

[tmcd at panix.com]

"Tom Parr" <seamus at elfsea.net> wrote:
> The easy way to prove that a design is yours is to stick it in a
> envelope and mail it to yourself.  The courts like the US Postal
> Service and it holds up in court with the date stamp.  When you get
> the letter, don't open it, just stick it away.

That is a common urban legend, and several sites say that it's not
true.   <http://www.focusonpatents.com/mail_it.html>

     Myths about Patents:

     Mailing your application to yourself and retaining it in an
     unopened envelope is just wasting postage. The old wives tale of
     mailing it to yourself has little evidentiary value. By making
     and witnessing a complete description of your invention, you are
     establishing one of the most credible records of
     invention. Another credible record is the Document Disclosure
     Program available from the United States Patent & Trademark
     Office, http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/pac/disdo/html.

(That's for patents, of course.  <http://www.loc.gov/copyright/> is
the home page for the U.S. Copyright Office.
<http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ1.html#cr> explains registration.
You need only two copies, but the nonrefundable fee is $30.)

<http://news.gw.com/openbsd.advocacy/884> explains further:
] Mailing yourself something to get it postmarked proves nothing, and
] doesn't help you at all.  What's stopping you from mailing yourself
] an empty, unopened envolope and putting stuff in it after the fact
] and then sealing it?

<http://musicians.about.com/library/weekly/copyrights/blcopyrights8.htm>
quotes Josquin Des Pres, _Creative Careers in Music_:

    Because you are handling the logistics yourself...the evidence is
    subject to skepticism...you may have tampered with the seal or
    otherwise rigged the envelope to include self-serving
    evidence. Cheap as it is, the poor man's copyright isn't worth
    it. You're taking too much of a chance with your intellectual
    property.

<http://www.cleverjoe.com/articles/music_publishing_copyright.html>
adds "I DO NOT recommend this method of establishing proof of
copyright ownership. Over the years since people first started doing
it, it has been put to the test in court and hasn't held up that
well."  I don't know of any court case citations, though.

A fair number of Web sites that describe and praise the "poor man's
copyright" also talk about how it "creates" your copyright.  That
alone makes me suspicious: the Berne Convention (to which the US and
most other countries are signatories) says that copyright comes into
existence when the work is first fixed in a tangible form, as on
paper.

--
Tim McDaniel, tmcd at panix.com; tmcd at us.ibm.com is my work address