Is <I>The New New Thing</I> Copyrighted?
Michael Lewis' just published book, The
New New Thing , lists a copyright date
of 2000. (Click here
to read Joe Nocera and Jean Strouse's discussion of the book.) Does this mean
it is not legally protected until next year?
No. A book's reported copyright date is essentially
meaningless. Copyright protection is granted automatically to a work
immediately upon its creation (which, in the case of a book, means the moment
an author first puts his pen to the paper or fingers to the keyboard).
Publication of the work or registration with the U.S. Copyright Office is not
required. Until this decade, however, authors had to publicly declare a claim
of copyright on published works for it to be legally binding. But in 1989, the
use of a copyright notice was made optional; users must now presume that a work
is copyrighted even if it does not directly say so.
If a work is copyrighted by the author, the protection
lasts until 70 years after his or her death. If it is copyrighted by a third
party (e.g., a publisher), it is protected for 95 years after publication or
120 years from creation, whichever is shorter. Thus, there is little legal
consequence to post-dating a copyright claim. So, why do it? Typically, a
book's scheduled release date changes multiple times before publication.
Publishers often use the latest of the potential publishing dates in order to
ensure that a new new book doesn't look old too soon.
Next question?
