Who Owns My Writing? A Writer's Guide To Copyright

Copyright can seem like a minefield, especially if you're starting out in freelance writing. However, the truth is that copyright law is pretty simple. Here are the basics of copyright law for freelance writers.

Protection Of Ideas

It happens to all writers at some point. We have a great idea for an article, mention it to a few people, and the next thing we know someone else has written an article based on the idea. And it's OK for them to do it. You can't copyright an idea. However, once a story has been written, that's when copyright law applies. The information writers choose and the way they arrange it is what makes each story or article unique.

Protection Of Written Work

What this means is that literary work such as newspaper and magazine articles, song lyrics. short stories and novels get automatic copyright protection. This protection also applies to dramatic, musical and artistic works, published editions of works, films, sound recordings and broadcasts. In order to enjoy legal copyright protection the work must arise from independent intellectual effort. That's a fancy way of saying that the person who owns the copyright must have put some work into creating the material.

So if a writer writes an article and takes photos to illustrate it, the writer automatically owns the copyright to both the photos and the written work. All copyright protected works are known as intellectual property. Like real estate, intellectual property can be bought, sold, leased and traded.

Copyright Registration

What's great about copyright is that it's an automatic and unregistered right. You don't have to fill in any forms or make an application to register your copyright to a piece of written work. As soon as you produce the work, the copyright takes effect. If you do want to have your copyright registered, then you can use the US Copyright Office to do so, but it's optional.

Duration Of Copyright

A key question for writers is how long copyright lasts. In the case of literary, dramatic or musical works, copyright remains in force until 70 years after the author's death. There are different periods for other types of published works. You can get more information about these from the US Copyright Office or UK Intellectual Property websites.

Assigning Rights

When you have a piece of writing published, what you are actually doing is giving someone else the chance to use the copyright. Think of it as issuing a lease on a house rather than selling it. Unless you are doing work for hire as a ghostwriter, you should retain the rights to your work. It is normal to offer first serial rights, which are the rights to publish your work first in a particular country or region, so an American writer might say in a query letter: 'I am offering first North American serial rights.' Once that piece of writing has been published, all rights revert to the writer.

Other Copyright Issues

A term that you will often see in books is 'moral right'. This refers to the right of a writer to be credited as the author of a piece of writing. For freelance writers, this would consist of a byline. There's also the notion of 'fair use', which allows people to publish short excerpts of copyrighted work for news, criticism or review.