Shriramana Sharma wrote: >Hello. > >I have heard that in copyright declarations like: > >----------- >Copyright (C) 2007, Company X, Country Y. All rights reserved. >----------- > > >it is incorrect to use (C) in place of the symbol © which is the strict >copyright symbol. Is this so? This is not legal advice, but I believe this is correct.
> If yes, why? It is not clear whether "(C)" has legal effect; it probably doesn't. The "C in a circle" is in the Universal Copyright Convention and various laws (but mostly the UCC). >Further, whether (C) or ©, isn't it superfluous to use it after the >word "copyright" which itself means the same thing? Almost superflous. It's completely superfluous for domestic copyright in the US (and all other countries I know of), and for international copyright in any country which signed the Berne Convention. However, the symbol is relevant for the Universal Copyright Convention. Under the UCC, a proper copyright notice contains the C in a circle, and the word "copyright" is *not* sufficient. So this is relevant strictly for getting copyright in countries which are UCC members but *not* Berne members (Berne doesn't require any notices, and almost all countries are Berne members). The UCC as far as I can tell is usually interpreted quite strictly, so if you're obsessed with getting UCC copyright protection, you should use the proper symbol and not an approximation to it. The following UCC signatories have not signed the Berne Convention: (1) Andorra (2) Cambodia (3) Laos (4) Saudi Arabia (5) Turkmenistan (6) Uzbekistan So the "C in a circle" is *only* relevant in international law if you are trying to get copyright protection in one of those six countries, without doing whatever is required there to acquire a local copyright. If you really do care about those six countries, you should probably just get a local copyright! (Remember, this isn't legal advice; for all I know the C in a circle is referenced in a bilateral copyright treaty with Vietnam or some other really obscure thing I haven't checked. But I doubt it.) --- In addition, "All rights reserved" is completely, totally superfluous for new works published anywhere, since it related only to rights under the Buenos Aires Convention, and *every* Buenos Aires signatory has signed Berne. Don't use that phrase, as it confuses people. So a good copyright statement in ASCII looks like this: Copyright 2007 Company X. If you care about Andorra or Cambodia and have Unicode you can do this: Copyright © 2007 Company X. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]