Copyright Practice
Own your creations
Copyright law provides a mechanism for protecting artistic and expressive creations, such as books, movies, television shows, and music. Copyrights are created when an expressive work is fixed in a tangible form. However, registering copyrights is necessary in order to enforce them in court and provides remedies that would not otherwise be available.
Hansen IP Law assists clients in the registration and enforcement of copyrights.
What copyright does – and does not – protect
Copyright protects works of expression, not ideas or function. Words and short phrases, such as slogans, are generally not protectable by copyright; they are better protected, if at all, as trademarks.
Software
Software is the redheaded stepchild of intellectual property. Copyright protects only the "expressive elements" of a program. As to source code, you cannot protect its function, only the more arbitrary aspects that are not tethered to that function, and where there is only one sensible way to write a routine, copyright gives you nothing. That is why software is typically protected by a combination of copyright law, trade secret law, and carefully drafted licenses, and why the license deserves the same attention you would give a patent claim.
Steve Hansen has also spoken to the IT Law Section of the State Bar of Michigan on strategies for litigating software copyright cases, including the "expressive" aspects of software that may be protectable and how to use them to build a non-infringement defense.
What we do
- Copyright registration
- Copyright enforcement
- Software protection strategy and licensing