Back when I was a kid, I heard that if you wanted to “prove” that you had a copyright on something, you could put whatever you wanted to copyright into an envelope that was address to yourself and mail it. The theory was that if you ever needed to prove it in court, you could do a dramatic “Perry Mason”-like opening of the letter, triumphantly showing that you’re the actual copyright owner. This has been called the “Poor Man’s Copyright”.
Ok, here’s the deal. I know that you can officially copyright your work relatively inexpensively, and I know that works are automatically copyrighted when they’re created.
What I haven’t been able to find out is where the “Poor Man’s Copyright” isn’t valid. I’ve seen a bunch of people saying that it isn’t, and I believe it isn’t valid, but where’s the proof?
As you say, works are automatically copyrighted when they’re created. What the “poor man’s copyright” does is prove that the work was created before a stated date - the date the letter is postmarked. It doesn’t prove conclusively who created the work. However if the envelope is postmarked, say, 1990, it does disprove the claim of someone who says he created the work in, say, 1995.
Mailing the item to yourself doesn’t prove that you created the work. It proves that the work was created at some point prior to the date of the postmark (presuming of course that you leave the envelope sealed). So the “poor man’s copyright” isn’t valid for proving copyright but it can be useful in establishing a timeline, i.e. Big Publishing Corp claims to have copyrighted Your Work Of Genius in 1999 but you have the original hand-written manuscript in a sealed envelope with a 1998 postmark.
Mailing the item to yourself doesn’t prove that you created the work. It proves that the work was created at some point prior to the date of the postmark (presuming of course that you leave the envelope sealed). So the “poor man’s copyright” isn’t valid for proving copyright but it can be useful in establishing a timeline, i.e. Big Publishing Corp claims to have copyrighted Your Work Of Genius in 1999 but you have the original hand-written manuscript in a sealed envelope with a 1998 postmark.
I think you’re supposed to mail it to yourself certified mail (so it gets the stamps and the certification number is registered with the post office and so on) and of course don’t open it when you get it.
That establishes a date on which the work was in your possession. For someone else to claim the right to copy without your permission, they’d have to show they had had it in their possession (or the possession of someone who gave them permission) prior to the date you did the mailing.
ANd all this time, I thought it wasn’t valid, since it’s perfectly okay to mail yourself an empty, unsealed envelope (and then later put stuff in it and seal it)…
I have always wondered about this idea. What is to stop somebody mailing themselves a lot of unsealed envelopes - getting them all stampped up - and then sealing in a document of their choice at a later date?
You send the envelope by registered post, so it has to be sealed before the Post Office will take it. Also this avoids any risk of getting a postmark with an illegible date stamp - you will have a dated certificate of posting which ties with the number on the envelope.
How difficult would it be to use a weak glue (enough for the Post Office to OK the seal) and then open it when received, insert contents and reseal with a stronger glue ?
Registration is still required for an infringement claim. The good news is that you can register any time you like, so long as it’s priort to your filing an infringement claim.
Yeah, see, that’s the thing. If someone sent an envelope like that through the mail, there’s nothing to stop them from adding the contents later. That’s why I think this whole “Poor Man’s Copyright” is so easily foiled. I just haven’t see anything in copyright/patent office/court ruling about it.
When I did it, I wrapped the materials I wanted to copyright in a wrapper, boxed the wrapper and taped it down with package tape. The dozen or more certified mail stamps overlap the package and the tape. No one seeing it would suggest that there was any possibility that I’d steamed the sucker open and added or changed the contents.
The goal here is to establish to the satisfaction of a future hypothetical court that you had the contents in your possession as of the mailing date. If you would doubt the sanctity of a plain white envelope, figure that a court might do likewise and do what you need to do to make that scenario less believable.
re: not seeing anything about it in law, I always heard it referred to as “common law copyright” rather than “poor man’s copyright”, so maybe that’s a meaningful clue here.
srpcorrect. People who talk about “Poor Man’s Copyright” never seem to be able to point out an actual court case in which it worked. As far as I know, there simply aren’t any. Finding cases in which it didn’t work is equally hard, mostly because I assume no competant lawyer would dare bring it up as a defense.
The other question you have to ask is why it would be needed. In what circumstances would you ever need to show that your work had been created earlier?
The only examples I can reasonably think of are for pieces posted electronically. Plagiarism of print works are rare in print, and the work itself serves as a prior claim. OTOH, print works are stolen regularly and posted on the Internet, and electronically posted works are taken and reposted without acknowledgement. Is this what you are worried about?
Proving you were the first person to post something is admittedly harder than showing you created a work in print. It is also harder to show that you have been damaged. That’s why registration is so important: it allows you to request punitive damages in addition to actual monetary damages.
I don’t have time to do a thorough search, but I came across this discussion of damages for photographs, and it sounds identical to those for print works to me:
It doesn’t grant you any protection you don’t already have.
It is hardly likely to be relevant in any actual case.
It has never been used in court to prove anything.
It is unlikely you’d be able to prove infringement on this alone.
It is unecessary for print media; publishers don’t steal from unpublished unsolicited manuscripts. There has never been a case of this happening.
The same with Hollywood – studios never read unsolicited screenplays.*
Ditto for music.
It is a myth that this happens and a waste of time and money worrying about it.
*Yup, you hear all the time about lawsuits claiming this. However, you never hear about successful lawsuits. (Art Buchwald’s was a solicited screenplay, a different matter; other cases involved a published work).
“Common law copyright” is no longer meaninful in the United States except in the case of “unfixed works” (e.g., a speech or performance that is not recorded in any way). Copyright law has been completely preempted by federal law (Copyright Act of 1976).
Not entirely. Paramount first ripped off Buchwald’s original treatment (called, IIRC, “King for a Day”) when they produced Coming to America and gave him no credit. Once Buchwald had proved that, in fact, Paramount had ripped him off, then Paramount tried to prove that, even though they conceded Buchwald was indeed an original writer, he was entitled to no money because there were no “net profits” on the film according to the terms and definitions of his boilerplate contract. It took years (mostly because of studio stonewalling), but eventually Buchwald prevailed. The whole sordid story can be found in the book Fatal Subtraction, written by Buchwald’s attorney (Pierce something).
Re the OP, officially registering your copyright with the Library of Congress arm that handles such things grants you additional rights in a legal proceeding. Without a registered copyright, all you can sue for is compensatory damages. With a registered copyright, you can add other types of damages (punitive, IIRC, but don’t quote me). With a poor man’s copyright, you can yell and scream and still be restricted to compensatory damages, just as if you hadn’t registered your copyright. I seem to remember there’s also a time factor, though I don’t recall the details.
Spend the hundred bucks or whatever it is. Register your copyright. Only extreme poverty is an excuse not to.