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Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!rutgers!rochester!bbn!husc6!ut-sally!im4u!vixen!joe
From: joe@vixen.uucp (Joe Hitchens)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga,comp.sys.misc,comp.sys.ibm.pc,comp.sys.mac,comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Copyrighting
Keywords: legal
Message-ID: <188@vixen.uucp>
Date: 21 Feb 88 22:06:43 GMT
References: <4815@ihlpg.ATT.COM> <3343@killer.UUCP> <2608@gryphon.CTS.COM> <333@esquire.UUCP> <22977@brunix.UUCP>
Reply-To: joe@vixen.UUCP (Joe Hitchens)
Organization: My House, Austin TX
Lines: 34

In article <22977@brunix.UUCP> cs224065@brap0a94.UUCP (Nicholas Thompson) writes:
>Don't bet on it...as I recall from the booklet on corporate security
>they gave me when I first went to work, the only ABSOLUTE way to
>secure the copyright on the document is with the symbol-which-is-
>usually-approximated-by-(c).  You know, the small letter c with the
>circle around it.  The c with parentheses doesn't cut it, neither
>does "Copyright (c) 1988 by Nick Thompson.  All Rights Reserved."
>Of course it doesn't hurt to put that in, and it will certainly
>give you some protection, but apparently the letter of the law says
>that you need the little symbol that isn't in the ASCII character
>set.  So how do you protect your source code?  Well, all the stuff
>mentioned above counts for something, I hope...
>

I sent for copyright info booklets from the government 1 or maybe 2 years ago.
It said thus:
	Copyright 1988 Joe Hitchens All Rights Reserved  (is correct)
	Copr. 1988 Joe Hitchens All Rights Reserved      (is correct)
	(c) 1988 Joe Hitchens All Rights Reserved        
		(where the "(c)" is actually a small c in a circle is correct)
	(c) 1988 Joe Hitchens All Rights Reserved        
		(where the "(c)" is a c in 2 parenthesis  is NOT correct)

In my case, I have always gone with the:
	Copyright 1988 Joe Hitchens All Rights Reserved
It seems the most official looking.

NOTE: Despite all the visible copyright messages in this text,
      I would like to make it clear that this text is actually NOT
      copyrighted but, but rather just a discussion of copyrighting
      practices.  (In case anyone has a weak heart.) :-)
      It is actually in the Public Domain.  

j.h.