<aside> <img src="/icons/error_red.svg" alt="/icons/error_red.svg" width="40px" /> This would be a good document to have reviewed and approved by your Legal team.
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Copyright is a bundle of exclusive legal rights that vary depending on the type of work. A copyright owner can grant some or all of those rights to others through a license. This section will lay out our approach to copyrights, trademarks, and Creative Commons licenses.
Copyright protection applies to any original works that are fixed in a tangible medium. This includes works like drawings, recordings of a song, short stories, or paintings, but not something like a garden, since it will grow and change by nature. Copyright does not cover facts, ideas, names, or characters.
Copyright protection begins when the work is first created and it doesn’t require any formal filings. However, to enforce a copyright in the US, you need to register the work with the US Copyright Office. (For further clarity, check out their FAQ page, which is full of gems like “How do I protect my sighting of Elvis?”)
Copyright notice on the work is not required but it is recommended, since it cuts off a defense of innocent infringement.
Copyright law applies to nearly every piece of content we create at [your company name], from our website to our blog posts to the gifts we make for our users. We display proper—and prominent—copyright notices on our website site and any other content we produce.
At minimum, these copyright notices read, “© [YEAR] [your company name].”
At the bottom of every page of our website, we also include a longer notice to make it clear that all rights are reserved and our marks are registered: “© 2001-2015 All Rights Reserved. [your company name]® is a registered trademark of [your company dba].”
We respect the copyright of other creators. If we want to use someone else’s copyrighted work, we have to obtain a license from the owners.
A copyright license spells out these terms:
A common license will read something like this: