The world of intellectual property uses a great variety of signs, symbols and notices which are generally assigned to the work we want to protect. However, the legal function of those indications is not always obvious to non-lawyers.
The mention "copyright" and the symbol "©"
The Copyright protection is acquired by the fact of creating an original work.
The presence of a copyright notice of the type "© NAME 1999" is therefore not a necessary formality in order to benefit from copyright and should not be considered as a guarantee of the existence of rights over the work. A copyright notice simply allows the copyright owner, whose name appears, to be presented as such to the public.
Therefore, the omission of a copyright notice does not deprive automatically the author of all protection. In fact, a work is protected as long as it fulfils the conditions for copyright protection, regardless of the existence or otherwise of a copyright notice.
The copyright notice may, however, offer some practical advantages.
Thus, if we wish to use a work, we will first speak to the person designated in the copyright notice, asking him or her to confirm that he or she is actually the holder of the rights.
Furthermore, the copyright notice can be useful in case of litigation in order to establish the ownership of the rights. Indeed, the person mentioned as author will be presumed to be the holder of the rights. The burden of proof will fall on anyone who challenges this ownership.
The mentions "copyfree" or "copyleft"
Some works are put on sale or on the Internet with notices such as "copyleft" and "copyfree". It is wise to be cautious with those terms, which do not imply necessarily that those works are not legally protected at all. If they are original works and the copyright protection has not expired (in principle, 70 years after the author's death), they are still protected by copyright.
By using the notice "copyleft", the author normally intends to give a free use licence under certain conditions. The user is therefore authorised to exploit the work within the limits established by its author. Thus, some authors might want to exclude the use of their works for commercial purposes and only allow private and personal uses.
In practice, it is advisable to refer to the notices or general conditions of use that come with the work in order to know what the uses authorised by the author are.
A limited legal scope of the mentions of copyright
The notices used in copyright are mainly intended to show the user the supposed identity of the author (the "copyright" notice), or to state that a free use licence is granted by the author (notices such as "copyfree").
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