"Copyright" misspelled - still valid or not?

Factual Questions
1

If someone intentionally misspells the word copyright as “copywrite” on a website to be cute, or because they simply don’t know better, is it still valid?

In other words, does a copyright notification have to be technically perfect, or is showing intent sufficient? Also, is © or © necessary?

Even if “Copywrite 2004-2005” was valid, if slightly out of date, let’s assume they fix the spelling and date to read “Copyright 2004-2006” - are there any benefits to using the full “Copyright ©2004-2006, Their Name” form?

2

I think if it came to it, a judge would understand the intent.

Now, an English teacher may not be so kind…

3

Copyright obtains from the moment of the creation of the copyrightable work. It is not necessary to register a copyright (or spell it correctly) for the copyright to exist.

4

As Otto says, not only is everything copyrighted automatically, but the notice itself has not been required since March 1, 1989.

So it doesn’t matter a whit what you say or do or don’t do.

5

If a copyright notice isn’t required, why do people insist on cluttering up the world with them?

Just to say “This is mine, and I’ll break your thieving little fingers if I catch you swiping it, all rights reserved”?

6

Pretty much. It’s something of a holdover. Of course there might be some circumstances where it’s useful if something could be mistaken for being in the public domain.

If you had an older book that was still under protection of copyright it might be useful to give notice, for instance, so that it would not be confused for a book in the public domain (like “Frankenstein,” for instance.)

7

Exapno is correct that Notice of Copyright is no longer required, but the Library of Congress still recommends it. Even when the notice was compulsory, the word “copyright” (as opposed to the © symbol) was sufficient. Here is the pertinent section of the LOC’s circular on Copyright Basics. Note that the boxed sentence

implies that even the LOC themselves aren’t saying whether the word “copywrite” would constitute an appropriate notice.

8

How much force of law does a “uncopyright” notice carry? If somebody sticks at the bottom of their document “copyright not asserted - reprint whatever you like”, or the old Discordian gag “all rites reversed”, can somebody take that notice at its face value and forget about any potential copyright battles if the author changes their mind?

9

So, let’s go back then.

I know that The Night of the Living Dead is public domain in the US because the copyright notice was left off accidentally. What if the notice had been misspelled accidentally? I’m guessing that “It says ‘Moops!’” isn’t much a legal argument, but I’m not sure.

10

IANAL, but from all the professional photo organizations I belong to, the difference between registering a copyright and not has been explained to me as the amount of money you can recover. With an unregistered copyright, you general can only sue for actual damages. With a registered copyright, you can sue for punitive damages. Also, registered copyright makes your case much easier in terms of standard of proof.

11

According to wikimedia that particular situation can’t happen anymore (I’m not a fan of most copyright laws, but that type of ‘gotcha’ seemed over the top).

12

I’m aware that it can’t happen anymore. Notice the quoted text in my post, and the first line.

13

Ah. I just saw an interesting fact to investigate and missed the rest. :slight_smile:

14

This is certainly correct, but it has nothing to do with whether a copyright notice is put on the work or not. Different action entirely. Just wanted to point that out for the others.

A copyright notice today is mostly a defense against an “innocent infringement.” If you discover an old and literally unnoticed work in 2079 and just assume that it’s out of copyright, you have a good case if there is nothing else to show its date of creation. This doesn’t work if there are other ways of determining the date, say as with a page from the Dope, with all the posts datestamped.

What will happen in the future with variant copyright notices may be uncertain, but any notice can probably be taken as showing a probable date of creation and thus negating an “innocent infringement” claim.

What happened in the past is for the lawyers to argue over. I have no idea about past law on variant copyright notices. Never even heard of a case.

There is an argument in the writing community whether you can actually place a work into the public domain just by declaring it so. You can certainly declare that it can be freely used by anyone without permission, but some people claim this is an implied license of use instead. (Software writers often use this type of declaration.) The difference is mostly theoretical for now but does leave open the question of whether someone can change their mind 50 years later.