Copyrights
Copyright
is a form of protection provided to the authors of "original works of
authorship" including literary, dramatic, musical, artistic, and certain
other intellectual works, both published and unpublished.
The
1976 Copyright Act generally gives the copyright owner the exclusive
right to reproduce the copyrighted work, to prepare derivative works, to
distribute copies or phonorecords of the copyrighted work, to perform
the copyrighted work publicly, or to display the copyrighted work
publicly.
A copyright protects
the form of expression rather than the subject matter of the writing.
For example, a description of a machine could be copyrighted, but this
would only prevent others from copying the description; it would not
prevent others from writing a description of their own or from making
and using the machine. Copyrights are registered by the Copyright
Office of the Library of Congress.
