Copyright notice

An innocent infringement defense can result in a reduction in damages that the copyright owner would otherwise receive.

Omitting the notice on any work first published from January 1, 1978, to February 28, 1989, could have resulted in the loss of copyright protection if corrective steps were not taken within a certain amount of time.

The Copyright Office has issued regulations concerning the position of the notice and methods of affixation.

The notice should be permanently legible to an ordinary user of the work under normal conditions of use and should not be concealed from view upon reasonable examination.

A copyright notice also gives a clear statement of ownership and date of publication, in the event of a work for hire or collaborative effort; explicitly stating the copyright claimant can reduce disputes over ownership, while explicitly stating the year of publication can (particularly in the cases of works claimed by corporations) make it clear when said copyright expires, thereby reducing the chances of the work being orphaned and left in a legal limbo.

Inclusion of a proper copyright notice on the originals is also evidence that the copyright owners may use to defeat a defense of "innocent infringement", to avoid "statutory damages", other than in certain cases claiming a "fair use" defense.

[5] Certain foreign works published in the US without copyright notice prior to 1989, which made them public domain, have had their copyrights "restored"[6] under the Uruguay Round Agreements Act, provided the rights had not already expired in their country of original publication prior to 1996.

Under the 1870 law, in effect until 1909, the copyright owner had to write "Entered according to act of Congress, in the year _________________, by A.

"[9] Under the 1909 law, in effect until 1978, the notice for printed literary, musical, or dramatics works had to contain the name of the author, the year, and "Copyright" or "Copr."

[13] Legal scholar Wendy Seltzer has pointed out how many organizations overstate their rights in their copyright notices.

For her law class in 2007, Seltzer copied the televised copyright notice of the NFL, during Super Bowl XLI, using her rights under fair use.

A copyright notice from a 19th-century book published in the United States

An incomplete copyright notice. Because multiple parties were involved in the production of *The New 3 Stooges* , failure to specify the claimant thrust the series into the public domain.