What If a Work Does Not Contain a Copyright Notice?
It’s common to start copyright research by examining the copyright notice. However, in some cases, the notice may be missing from the work. One reason you may not find a notice is because notice is not required on works first published after March 1, 1989. In addition, for works published prior to that date, notice is required only on visually perceptible copies–that is, copies that can be seen directly or with the aid of a device such as a film projector. Printed books, paintings, drawings, films, architecture and computer programs are all visually perceptible. However, some copies of works are not visually perceptible, such as a song on a compact disc. Copyright notice would be required if the song lyrics were printed on the album cover. Another reason that a work may not include notice is that the owner failed to affix it, which may result in the loss of copyright. For works first published before 1978, for example, the absence of a copyright notice from a published copy generally
Related Questions
- Thousands of images on the web don have a copyright notice, watermark, or Digimark®. Since nobody bothered to copy-protect them, why can I just download them for my own art and web site?
- I have read your copyright notice and would like to use your designs interpreted in fabric / wood / appliqu / paint, etc. to sell to clients?
- Can/Should individual committers added copyright statements to the NOTICE or source code files?
