Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!ames!pacbell!att!ihnp4!ihlpa!cga66 From: cga66@ihlpa.ATT.COM (Kauffold) Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc Subject: Re: ?->Copyright my Program Summary: Copyright is easy Message-ID: <7977@ihlpa.ATT.COM> Date: 19 May 88 17:34:07 GMT References: Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories - Naperville, Illinois Lines: 38 In article , cy03+@andrew.cmu.edu (Chao-Ping Yang) writes: > Could somebody tell me about the procedure in obtaining a copyright > for a program that I have written? I am thinking about distributing > it but I would like to copyright it first. Basically, you must include the copyright notice in the source code, of the form Copyright (c) 1988 by C-P Yang. All rights reserved. It then becomes an "unpublished work", and is afforded some protection as such. You might also want to include a "trade secret" notice which says, generally, that you place a value on your software and don't want anyone to think otherwise. There are a lot of things you have to do to be afforded legal protection, like keeping software locked up, never alowing it to be released into the "public domain", and generally being paranoid. You will get to know lawyers. It is a good idea to make sure your copyright notice appears on every page of listings which you may produce, and on pages of documentation, user's manuals, etc. To "perfect" your copyright, you must send your work (or portions thereof) to the copyright office (or Library of Congress), with a 2 or 3-page form. I think there is a small fee. Opinions vary about the effectiveness of copyrights and trade secrets in protecting you from rip-off. Copyright protection is kind of weak; trade secret laws (like the UCC) may be better in some cases. Of course, you can try for a patent, but that takes $$$ and time. Since I am NOT a lawyer, this advice is free (otherwise, you would not get it!). Please take it for what it is worth. Pat Kauffold, !Esq.