Copyright — guides, checklists and articles
121 practical documents on Copyright, newest first.
By document type
- Articles (35)
- Guides (32)
- Checklists (31)
- Toolkits (23)
Documents
- Education Copyright Checklist: Faculty Ownership, Classroom Use, Course Packs, Platform Terms, and Student Work · Checklist — This checklist audits and then builds copyright compliance at an educational institution across the four systems that actually matter. Phase one interrogates…
- Who Gets Paid When a Song Streams: Music Licensing in the Streaming Era · Article — Every track you stream carries two separate copyrights, the musical work (the song as written) and the sound recording (the master), and each is owned and…
- Sending a DMCA Takedown Notice: A Compliance Checklist · Checklist — A phase-by-phase compliance checklist for sending a DMCA takedown notice that a hosting provider cannot ignore, grounded in 17 U.S.C. Section 512. It runs the…
- Registering a Copyright: A Step-by-Step Tour of the Copyright Office · Article — A copyright springs into existence the instant an original work is fixed in a tangible medium, yet the unregistered copyright is a right you cannot fully…
- DMCA Takedowns: How to Send One, How to Fight One · Guide — A practical, two-sided guide to the DMCA's notice-and-takedown system under 17 U.S.C. Section 512. It explains the safe-harbor bargain that makes platforms…
- Can You Copyright a Font? Style, Typefaces, and the Fine Line · Article — Can you copyright a font? The honest answer arrives in three parts, because copyright law sees three different objects where most people see one. An artistic…
- Fair Use After Warhol v. Goldsmith: Transformativeness Reconsidered · Article — Fair use is the safety valve that keeps copyright from smothering the creativity it exists to encourage, and the Supreme Court's 2023 decision in Andy Warhol…
- Translation, Localisation, and Adaptation Rights Toolkit: Grants, Vendors, Moral Rights, and Markets · Toolkit — A translation is a derivative work, which means it needs permission, and it is also an original work, which means the translator owns it unless the contract…
- Art Transaction Checklist: Title and Provenance, Authentication Evidence, Consignment Terms, Reproduction Rights, and Export Restrictions · Checklist — This checklist runs an art transaction from description to delivery, in the order that lets each step stop the deal cheaply before the next one costs money.…
- Copying a Dress: Fashion, the Useful Article Doctrine, and Why Design Piracy Is Mostly Legal · Article — American law protects a printed textile and leaves the dress it becomes almost entirely unprotected, which is why fast fashion is a business rather than a…
- Fair Use After Warhol: Transformative Purpose, Market Harm, and the Four Factors · Article — This article explains how the fair use defense codified at Section 107 actually works after Andy Warhol Foundation v. Goldsmith (2023), which recentered the…
- Deploying Generative AI Without Losing Your IP: A Practitioner's Guide to Authorship, Disclosure, and Contracts · Guide — This guide is the operational companion to the Rightsy article on AI authorship: twelve numbered stages that take a company from "our designers started using…
- Producing a Podcast or Audio Series: A Practitioner's Guide to Music Licensing, Releases, Show Marks, and Distribution · Guide — This guide takes an audio series from the naming decision to the archive, in the order the work has to be done. It covers clearing and filing the show name,…
- Copyright Enforcement Toolkit: Takedowns, Demands, and Federal Litigation · Toolkit — This toolkit maps the entire copyright enforcement ladder in the Rightsy corpus and tells you which rung to stand on for a given dispute — monitoring and…
- VARA and Attribution Checklist: Commissioning, Waivers, Notice, and Removal · Checklist — Fifteen phases covering a work of visual art from commissioning to removal, written for whichever chair you occupy. Phase one is a five-question coverage…
- Protecting a Furniture or Homewares Line: A Practitioner's Guide to Separability, Design Filings, Trade Dress, and Reproduction Control · Guide — This guide is for counsel building an intellectual property programme for a furniture or homewares business, and it starts from the fact that most of what the…
- Sending and Fighting a DMCA Takedown: A Practitioner's Guide to Notices, Counter-Notices, and Misrepresentation Claims · Guide — This is the working manual for the notice-and-takedown machinery of 17 U.S.C. 512 - what to do, in what order, on what clock, and at what cost. Fifteen…
- What the Copyright Act Kills: Section 301 Preemption and the State-Law Claims That Survive · Article — A plaintiff with a copying problem instinctively pleads five state-law claims alongside the copyright count, and Section 301 removes most of them. This article…
- The Image Business: Photography, Stock Licensing, and Visual Content Rights · Article — Photography is the most-licensed and least-understood category of copyrighted work, and most disputes about images are disputes about a license nobody read.…
- Clearing a Work for Public Domain Use: A Practitioner's Guide to Duration Analysis, Renewal Research, Restoration, and Risk Documentation · Guide — This guide clears a work for use, producing a memorandum rather than an answer, in the order the research should be done. It starts with identifying the…
- Advising an Esports or Streaming Business: A Practitioner's Guide to Publisher Licences, Broadcast Rights, Player Contracts, and Sponsorship · Guide — This guide is for counsel advising an esports organiser, team, or streaming business. It starts from the fact that almost nothing in the value chain belongs to…
- Collectibles and Auction Checklist: Title and Provenance, Authentication and Grading Terms, Reproduction and Image Rights, Consignment and Platform Terms, and Counterfeit Response · Checklist — This checklist audits a collectibles or auction position from any side of the trade. It begins with title rather than authenticity, because a thief passes no…
- Buildings Are Works Too: Architectural Copyright, Technical Drawings, and the Sightline Exception · Article — A building is protected by copyright and a photograph of it from the street is not an infringement, which is the oddest pairing in the statute and the one…
- Running Copyright Compliance at an Educational Institution: A Practitioner's Guide to Policy, the TEACH Act, Course Materials, and Vendors · Guide — This guide builds copyright compliance at an educational institution as four connected systems rather than as a policy document nobody reads. It starts with…
- Small Claims for Copyright: What the Copyright Claims Board Actually Does · Article — For most of copyright's history the enforcement system had a floor: below roughly fifty thousand dollars in exposure, a claim was not worth bringing, because…
- Copyright Infringement Complaint Checklist: Registration, Elements, Venue, and Remedies · Checklist — This is the working checklist for taking a copyright infringement matter from the intake call to a filed, served, and defensible complaint in federal district…
- Art Market and Collections Toolkit: Title, Provenance, Consignment, and Reproduction · Toolkit — An artwork carries two separable bundles of rights and a history that may or may not be documented, and most disputes in this market arise from the gap between…
- Advising in the Art Market: A Practitioner's Guide to Consignment, Title, Authentication Risk, and Reproduction Rights · Guide — This guide sets out how to advise across the art market's principal relationships — collector, artist, dealer, auction house, and institution — in the order…
- Font and Design Asset Checklist: Inventory, Licence Scope, Embedding and Web Use, Audit Response, and Substitution Planning · Checklist — This checklist builds a licensed asset position from the only starting point that works: an inventory of what the organisation actually serves, embeds,…
- Who Owns What the Machine Made: Copyright Authorship in the Age of Generative AI · Article — This article explains who owns the output of a generative AI system under United States copyright law, and why the answer is so often that nobody does. It…
- Everything You Hear: Music, Guests, and Clips in Podcast and Audio Production · Article — A podcast is a download and an on-demand stream, which means it engages the reproduction, distribution, and public performance rights at once, and none of the…
- Advising on VARA and Moral Rights: A Practitioner's Guide to Waivers, Removal, and Site-Specific Work · Guide — A practitioner's guide to the narrowest statute in Title 17 and the very large judgments it occasionally produces. It opens with a five-question coverage…
- The Chair Nobody Can Copyright: Furniture, Homewares, and Design Protection for Objects You Sit On · Article — A chair is a useful article, and useful articles are outside copyright except to the extent their design features can be identified separately from and exist…
- Is It in the Public Domain? Duration, Restoration, Formalities, and How to Actually Tell · Article — Whether a work is in the public domain is a question of arithmetic and formalities, and getting it wrong costs a client the entire economics of a project. This…
- Playing for an Audience: Esports, Streaming, and the Rights in Watching Someone Else Play · Article — An esports broadcast is a performance of somebody else's copyrighted work. It is transmitted on a platform that imposes its own terms, by a player under…
- The DMCA Safe Harbor: How Section 512 Shields Platforms and Binds Rights Holders · Article — Section 512 of the Copyright Act is the deal Congress struck in 1998: online service providers get near-total immunity from monetary liability for their users'…
- Advising in the Collectibles Market: A Practitioner's Guide to Authentication, Grading, Reproduction Rights, and Platform Enforcement · Guide — This guide is for counsel advising a dealer, auction house, grader, platform, or collector. It begins with title rather than authenticity, because a thief…
- Live Performance Checklist: Underlying Rights and Grand Rights, Creative Team Agreements, Performer and Union Terms, Recording and Streaming Rights, and Venue and Insurance · Checklist — This checklist audits a production's rights position from the option to the archive, in the order the decisions arrive. Phase one splits the music question…
- Teaching From Someone Else's Book: Copyright in Classrooms, Course Materials, and Learning Platforms · Article — Educational copyright is not a general exception and never was, which is why the confident classroom folklore about ten percent rules and educational purpose…
- Copyright Fundamentals Toolkit: Ownership, Registration, Duration, and Scope · Toolkit — This toolkit is the orientation guide to American copyright at the starting line, and a curated tour of every Rightsy document that carries part of the…
- Small-Claims Copyright Enforcement Toolkit: The CCB, Takedowns, and Low-Value Disputes · Toolkit — Most copyright infringement is small - a photograph reused, an article republished, a design copied onto a mug - and federal litigation costs more than the…
- Publishing, Photography, and Author Rights Toolkit · Toolkit — Authors, photographers, illustrators, and the businesses that publish them are governed by a body of law that looks simple and is not: the grant of rights…
- Filing a Copyright Infringement Complaint in Federal Court: A Litigator's Guide · Guide — This guide walks a copyright infringement case from the first client meeting through filing, the defendant's first responsive move, and settlement, in thirteen…
- Is It Real? Authentication, Provenance, and the Warranties Behind a Work of Art · Article — The art market runs on two questions that no other market asks in the same way: is it by whom it is said to be by, and did the seller have the right to sell…
- Managing Fonts, Stock Assets, and Design Libraries: A Practitioner's Guide to Licence Scope, Embedding, Audits, and Substitution · Guide — This guide sets out how to run a licensed asset estate — fonts, images, illustrations, icons, templates, and audio — so that the organisation knows what it…
- Theatre and Live Performance IP Toolkit: Grand Rights, Creative Teams, Recording, and Venues · Toolkit — Live performance is the only major art form whose central product is not a copy, which is why its rights are the least understood and the most often assumed.…
- Game Development Legal Checklist: Clearance, Asset Provenance, User Content Terms, Streaming Policy, and Live Operations · Checklist — This checklist runs a game studio's legal programme from first commit to sunset, in the order the work actually falls. It opens with the asset register and the…
- Traditional Knowledge and Cultural Materials Checklist: Source Identification, Community Consultation, Consent and Benefit Terms, Attribution Labels, and Filing Objections · Checklist — This checklist runs the use of traditional knowledge or cultural material from the first design review to the annual look back, in the order the decisions…
- Copyright Registration Checklist: From Deposit to Certificate · Checklist — This checklist runs a single copyright claim from the first intake question to the docketed litigation calendar, in eleven phases a practitioner can work top…
- The Artist's Other Rights: Moral Rights, VARA, and Attribution in American Law · Article — American copyright law protects the economic rights of authors comprehensively and their personal rights barely at all - and the narrow statute that does…
- Games and Interactive Entertainment IP Toolkit: Mechanics, Assets, User Content, and Live Operations · Toolkit — A game is two things at once - a set of rules, which copyright does not protect, and an audiovisual work, which it protects well. This toolkit collects both…
- Publishing Agreement Checklist: Grant, Royalties, Warranties, and Reversion · Checklist — Sixteen phases for reviewing or negotiating a book contract, ordered by what is obtainable rather than by the order clauses appear in the form. It opens with…
- Anticircumvention Risk Checklist: Technological Measures, Exceptions, Exemption Fit, Trafficking, and Documentation · Checklist — This checklist assesses and reduces Section 1201 exposure for either side, in the order the questions should be asked rather than the order the statute is…
- The Provenance Premium: Auctions, Collectibles, and the Intellectual Property in Things People Collect · Article — A collectible is a physical object whose value comes almost entirely from information about it. Who made it, when, how many exist, what condition it is in, and…
- Producing a Live Performance: A Practitioner's Guide to Underlying Rights, Performer Agreements, Recording, and Venue Terms · Guide — This guide takes a producer's counsel from an option to an opening night and beyond it, in the order the decisions actually arrive. It starts with the…
- Cultural Heritage Digitisation Checklist: Rights Assessment, Diligent Search Records, Access Tiers, Community Consultation, and Takedown · Checklist — This checklist runs a cultural heritage digitisation programme from collection scoping to annual reporting, in the order that reduces the work rather than the…
- Accessibility and Inclusive Content Toolkit: Exceptions, Formats, Circumvention, and Procurement · Toolkit — Accessibility is the strongest position in copyright and almost nobody in the field treats it that way, which is why organisations buy converted files they are…
- Proving Copyright Infringement: Access, Substantial Similarity, and the Idea-Expression Divide · Article — A copyright plaintiff must prove two things, ownership of a valid copyright and copying of constituent elements that are original, and the second splits into…
- Podcasting and Audio Rights Toolkit: Music, Guests, Marks, and Distribution · Toolkit — A podcast is a download and an on-demand stream, which engages the reproduction, distribution, and public performance rights at once, and none of the…
- The Letters You Licensed: Fonts, Typefaces, and the Software Nobody Reads the Terms For · Article — A typeface is not protected by copyright in the United States, the font software that renders it is, and almost every dispute in this field lives in the gap…
- Protecting and Clearing a Game: A Practitioner's Guide to Mechanics, Assets, User Content, Streaming, and Mods · Guide — This guide runs the legal work of a game studio as a programme rather than a series of emergencies. It starts with the asset register, because provenance is…
- Working With Traditional Knowledge and Cultural Materials: A Practitioner's Guide to Consultation, Consent, Labels, and Contracts · Guide — This guide sets out how a company, an institution, or a researcher should approach the use of traditional knowledge or cultural material, in the order the work…
- Fitness, Wellness, and Class Format IP Toolkit: Sequences, Instructors, Music, and Studios · Toolkit — You cannot copyright a workout, which is the single most important sentence in this practice and the one most fitness founders refuse to accept. This toolkit…
- Fitness and Wellness IP Checklist: Format and Sequence Documentation, Instructor and Trainer Terms, Music and Streaming Licences, Studio Trade Dress, and Certification Programmes · Checklist — A ten-phase working checklist for studios, format owners, trainers, wellness brands, and content platforms. Phases one and two run the inventory and the naming…
- Registering a Copyright: A Practitioner's Guide to Applications, Deposits, and Group Registration · Guide — This guide is the operational manual for getting a copyright registered: the sequence of decisions, the forms, the fees, the deposits, and the failure modes.…
- Copyright Ownership and Chain-of-Title Checklist: Assignments, Work-for-Hire, and Termination Windows · Checklist — This checklist runs a copyright portfolio from an unexamined pile of files to a title package a buyer or lender will accept, in eleven phases. It builds the…
- Fashion and Apparel IP Toolkit: Separability, Design Filings, Trade Dress, and Counterfeits · Toolkit — American law protects a printed textile and leaves the dress it becomes almost entirely unprotected, which is why fast fashion is a business rather than a…
- Negotiating a Book Publishing Agreement: A Practitioner's Guide to Grant of Rights, Royalties, and Reversion · Guide — A negotiation guide for book contracts, organized by what is actually obtainable rather than by the order clauses appear in the form. It opens with the grant…
- Navigating Section 1201: A Practitioner's Guide to Access Controls, Statutory Exceptions, Triennial Exemptions, and Repair Programs · Guide — This guide runs a Section 1201 matter for either side, in the order the questions should be asked rather than the order the statute is written. It classifies…
- Character and Franchise Rights Checklist: Delineation Evidence, Chain of Title, Layered Protection, and Licensing Controls · Checklist — This checklist runs a character or franchise from evidence-building through diligence, protection, licensing, and enforcement. It opens with the delineation…
- The Show Itself: Theatre, Live Performance, and the Rights in Something That Happens Once · Article — A live performance is the only major art form whose central product is not a copy, which makes it the one where the rights are least understood and most often…
- Running a Digitisation and Access Programme: A Practitioner's Guide to Diligent Search, Section 108, Risk Tiers, and Takedown · Guide — This guide builds a digitisation and access programme as an operating system rather than a clearance exercise, because clearance at collection scale cannot be…
- Accessibility and IP Checklist: Authorised Entity Status, Format Conversion, Circumvention Exemptions, Vendor Terms, and Records · Checklist — This checklist builds and audits an accessible content programme against the statutory permission most organisations do not realise they hold. Phase one writes…
- Education and EdTech IP Toolkit: Faculty Works, Classroom Use, Platforms, and Student Data · Toolkit — Educational copyright is ordinary copyright with two narrow exemptions attached, and almost every institutional failure in the sector comes from believing…
- Traditional Knowledge and Cultural Expressions Toolkit: Consultation, Consent, Labels, and Objections · Toolkit — Intellectual property law was built around identifiable authors, fixed works, novel inventions, and finite terms, and traditional knowledge fits none of those…
- Translation and Localisation Checklist: Grant Scope, Vendor Ownership, Moral Rights, Marks and Transliteration, and Territory Control · Checklist — This checklist builds a localisation position that produces owned assets instead of a decade of unattributed derivative works. Phase one establishes the…
- Music, Film, and Creative Industry IP Toolkit · Toolkit — This toolkit assembles the Rightsy corpus on intellectual property in creative production — music, film, television, games, and advertising — into one ordered…
- Auctions, Collectibles, and Trading Cards IP Toolkit: Provenance, Grading, Images, and Platforms · Toolkit — The collectibles market runs on three questions that participants routinely collapse into one: can the seller convey title, is the object genuine, and what may…
- Rules of the Game: Why Game Mechanics Are Free, Clones Are Hard to Stop, and Everything Around Them Is Protected · Article — A game is two things at once - a set of rules, which copyright does not protect, and an audiovisual work, which it protects well. This article explains where…
- Borrowed Patterns: Traditional Knowledge, Cultural Expressions, and the Gaps in Western Intellectual Property · Article — Intellectual property law was built around identifiable authors, fixed works, novel inventions, and finite terms, and traditional knowledge fits none of those…
- What Copyright Registration Actually Buys You: Statutory Damages, Fees, and the Right to Sue · Article — Copyright attaches the instant an original work is fixed in a tangible medium, without a filing, a fee, or a government stamp, and yet an unregistered…
- Protecting a Fitness or Wellness Business: A Practitioner's Guide to Format Protection, Instructor Agreements, Music Licensing, and Franchise Structures · Guide — A working guide to acting for studios, format owners, trainers, wellness brands, and the platforms that distribute their content. It opens by reframing the…
- The Publishing Deal: Rights, Royalties, and What Authors Actually Sign · Article — A publishing contract is a copyright transfer dressed as a business arrangement, and most authors sign one without understanding which of the two it is. This…
- The DMCA's Other Half: Section 1201, Access Controls, Repair, and the Exemptions Nobody Reads · Article — Section 1201 creates liability for getting around a technological protection measure even where no copyright is infringed, which makes it a distinct regime…
- Protecting and Licensing a Character or Franchise: A Practitioner's Guide to Delineation, Layered Rights, and Merchandising · Guide — This guide takes a character from creation to commercial exploitation and sets out what has to be built at each stage. It begins with the delineation evidence…
- Transfers, Licenses, and Termination Rights: A Practitioner's Guide to Copyright Ownership Paperwork · Guide — This is the execution manual for copyright ownership paperwork, in twelve stages, from the first employee offer letter to the last closing deliverable in an…
- Music Clearance Checklist: Sync, Master, Mechanical, Sample, and Performance · Checklist — This is the working checklist for clearing music in any medium, in eleven phases, from the cue specification you write before making a single call through the…
- The Rights You Cannot Trace: Orphan Works, Mass Digitisation, and the Cultural Institution's Problem · Article — A cultural institution holds millions of items and can identify the rights holder for a small fraction of them, which is the central operating problem of the…
- Building an Accessible Content Programme: A Practitioner's Guide to Section 121, Marrakesh, Technical Measures, and Procurement · Guide — This guide builds an accessible content programme in the order that removes work rather than the order that feels legal. It starts with the authorised entity…
- Museums, Libraries, and Cultural Heritage IP Toolkit: Collections, Digitisation, and Access · Toolkit — Cultural institutions hold objects they own and rights they mostly do not, and the gap between those two positions is where every difficult decision in the…
- Fair Use Risk Assessment Checklist: Four Factors, Documentation, and Escalation · Checklist — This checklist takes one proposed or completed use of a third party's copyrighted work and drives it to a signed, dated decision — proceed, proceed with…
- Localising Content for Foreign Markets: A Practitioner's Guide to Translation Rights, Dubbing and Subtitles, Moral Rights, and Vendor Contracts · Guide — This guide builds a localisation programme that produces owned assets rather than a decade of unattributed derivative works. It begins with the clearance…
- Fashion IP Checklist: Design Documentation, Separability Analysis, Filing Sequence, Season Calendar, and Counterfeit Response · Checklist — This checklist runs a fashion intellectual property programme season by season, in the order the deadlines actually fall. It opens with the design…
- You Cannot Copyright a Workout: Fitness Formats, Studio Brands, and the Rights in Moving People Around a Room · Article — A fitness business believes it owns its format, and it almost certainly does not. This article explains why a sequence of exercises falls into the gap between…
- Visual Content Clearance Checklist: Rights, Releases, Metadata, and Usage Limits · Checklist — Fifteen phases that take visual content from the commissioning engagement to the demand letter, with a campaign clearance workflow built around five gates that…
- Copyright Preemption Checklist: Subject Matter, Equivalence, Extra Elements, and Claim-by-Claim Screening · Checklist — This checklist screens every state-law count in a copying case before the complaint is filed, and attacks one that was filed without the analysis. It runs the…
- Clearing a Track: A Practitioner's Guide to Sync, Mechanical, Master, and Sample Licenses · Guide — This guide is the operational walkthrough for clearing music: thirteen numbered stages running from the use specification you write before making a single…
- Who Owns the Work: Employees, Contractors, Joint Authors, and Work Made for Hire · Article — Copyright vests initially in the author, and paying someone to create a work almost never makes the payer the author. This article explains the two exclusive…
- Owning a Character: Protectable Characters, Fictional Worlds, and the Line Between Idea and Icon · Article — A character can be protected independently of the work it appears in, and the tests courts use are narrower and more demanding than merchandising practice…
- Anticircumvention and Repair Toolkit: Section 1201, Exemptions, and Right to Repair · Toolkit — Section 1201 prohibits circumventing technological measures independently of whether any copyright is infringed, which makes it the provision that reaches…
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