As I mentioned in one of my earlier posts, “Copyright Basics,” copyrights give their owners a bundle of exclusive rights — to copy, distribute and perform.  Owners can voluntarily transfer any or all of these rights in a variety of unique ways, including by transferring them all together, breaking them up and transferring them individually, or even further dividing them by, for instance, permitting any of the rights to be exercised at certain times and locations.  An example would be a publisher who enters into an agreement allowing a distributor to sell a magazine only in Portland for the month of December.  Owners can also transfer their rights on a exclusive or non-exclusive basis, giving even more flexibility to parties in negotiating over who gets what.

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A copyright is extremely easy to obtain.  Under federal law, an author need only come up with an original work and then “fix it in a tangible medium of expression.”  That’s it — you’ve automatically got a copyright in your new work, and the copyright lasts for your life plus seventy years.  But still, the definition is a bit hard to grasp without an example.  Take this blog entry: I, the author, wrote this entry (the original work) and then put it into our blog page and clicked publish (fixing it in this tangible medium of expression).  I now enjoy (more…)