We represent authors, photographers, designers and businesses in Maryland copyright matters, from
registration through enforcement. Our clients include nationally-known authors and photographers, and
our attorneys have over fifty years of combined experience protecting creative and commercial work. To
ask about copyright services, call (410) 752-9300.
What copyright protects
Copyright secures property rights in creative work and arises the moment an original work is fixed
in a tangible medium. Usually that medium is paper or a file, but it also covers things like
choreography and sound recordings. The work does not have to be novel or useful. It only has to be
original.
One boundary matters more than any other. Copyright protects the expression of an idea, not the idea
itself. Two people can write about the same subject, and only the words each of them wrote are
protected.
Plenty of work qualifies. Here is some of it.
- literary work, including novels, poems, news articles and blog posts
- musical work, including arrangements and lyrics
- sound recordings, podcasts among them
- dramatic work such as plays and musicals
- pictorial, graphic and sculptural work
- motion pictures and other audiovisual work
- choreography, including pantomime
- websites and the original content in them, whether text, audio, graphics or video
- architectural and industrial design
- some elements of fashion design, such as original prints and patterns
The rights you get
An owner of copyright in a qualifying work holds the exclusive right to reproduce it, to prepare
derivative works based on it, to distribute copies including by sale, to perform it, and to display it
publicly. Those rights can be dealt with separately, which is what makes
licensing possible.
Why register, if copyright is automatic?
Your rights exist from the moment the work is fixed, so registration is not what creates them. It is
what makes them practically enforceable, and the difference is large.
You cannot sue without it. An infringement action requires that the Copyright Office
have acted on your application, granting or refusing registration, before suit is filed. This is the
single biggest reason to register, and it is why registering after you discover a problem costs you
time you may not have.
It changes what you can recover. Register within three months of publication, or
before the infringement begins, and statutory damages and attorneys’ fees become available. Without
that, you are limited to actual damages, which means proving what the infringement cost you. Actual
damages are often modest and always difficult to establish, and the burden of proving them sits with
you.
On the amounts, ordinary statutory damages run up to $30,000 for each work infringed. Where a court
finds the infringement was willful, that ceiling rises to $150,000 per work. Those are maximums rather
than expectations, and where a case lands inside the range is a matter for the court.
It proves you own the work. As the party bringing a claim, you have to establish
ownership. A registration certificate does that, and it saves an expensive fight about something that
should not be in dispute.
It puts the world on notice. Your work goes into the Copyright Office’s searchable
database, which matters if an infringer later argues they had no idea your work existed. That argument
does not defeat liability, but under 17 U.S.C. § 504(c)(2) it can reduce statutory damages to as little
as $200, and a public registration makes it much harder to run.
Talk to a Maryland copyright attorney
If you hold work of real value and have never registered it, that is worth fixing before you need it.
Call (410) 752-9300 or use the contact form on this page. See also
copyright infringement
litigation.