Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cornell!uw-beaver!blake!aragorn
From: aragorn@blake.acs.washington.edu (Michael Owen)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.apple
Subject: "Common Law" Copyrights and Software
Summary: Do they exist, and are they applicable to software?
Message-ID: <1505@blake.acs.washington.edu>
Date: 8 Apr 89 09:06:05 GMT
Organization: Broken Blade Software
Lines: 19

(This is mainly directed at Andy Nicholas, David Lyons, Don Elton, Morgan
Davis, et al, but everybody feel free to respond.)

What steps should you take to properly copyright or otherwise "protect" a
piece of software?  Is there such a thing as a "common law" copyright that
anybody can slap on something that they've written or created and be legally
protected?  Or, must you go through a lawyer or some central clearing agency
that hands out copyrights?  Also, can these measures be applied equally to
pieces of writing and poetry?

I've written some programs that I'd like to legally mark as mine, but am
unsure as to how to go about this.  I've heard of mailing yourself a copy of
a program via US mail to prove that it existed at a certain date--is this a
viable way to prove you wrote something?
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