Copyright Vocabulary

Fair Use

"Fair use" is the right of the public to make reasonable use of copyrighted material in special circumstances without the Copyright Owner's Permission. The United States Copyright Act recognizes that fair use of a copyrighted work may be used "for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, or research."

Copyright Holder/Copyright Owner

A "copyright owner/holder" is a person or a company who owns any one of the Exclusive Rights of copyright in a work and is separate from the ownership of the work itself.

Trade Secret

A "trade secret" is any piece of information which a person or company uses in its business and protects as secret.

Royalty

In exchange for a License to do something with a copyrighted work, the person who wants to use the work will usually have to pay a certain amount of money, called a "royalty," to the Copyright Owner or other person licensing out the work.

Exclusive Rights

The "exclusive rights" of copyright in a work. Those rights are listed in Section 106 of the United States Copyright Act and include the right to (1) reproduce the work, (2) prepare Derivative Works of it, (3) distribute copies of it, (4) perform it publicly and (5) display it publicly.

First Sale Doctrine

The "first sale" doctrine recognizes that ownership of a copyright is different from ownership of a material object that is the subject of a copyright. Under the first sale doctrine, the owner of a lawfully-made copy of a copyrighted work may sell, rent or transfer that copy or publicly display that copy without the Copyright Owner's Permission.

Copyright

A "copyright" is actually a "bundle of rights" that the creator of a work is entitled to control if the work is "an original work of authorship fixed in a tangible medium of expression."

Patent

A "patent" is a type of Intellectual Property that relates to inventions and gives the creators of inventions a certain "bundle of rights". This includes the exclusive rights to (1) make copies of the invention, (2) use the invention for whatever purposes it was intended, (3) import copies of the invention, (4) sell copies of the invention, and (5) offer copies of the invention for sale, all for up to 20 years.

Service Mark

A "service mark" is any word, name, symbol or device used by a person or a company to identify and distinguish its services from the services of others in the same business.

Trademark

A "trademark" is any word, name, symbol or device used by a person or a company to identify and distinguish its products from the products of others in the same business.

Statutory Damages

A Copyright Owner, who brings a case for the Infringement of a work that has been registered with the United States Copyright Office, may ask the court for "statutory damages" instead of actual damages and lost profits. Must be between $200 - $150,000 for all infringements of each work.

Parody

A parody involves the use of elements of a previously existing work in a new work that, at least in part, comments on or criticizes the previously existing work and is usually meant to be funny. A parody of a copyrighted work can be a Fair Use.

Fixation

A work is not entitled to copyright protection until it is "fixed in a tangible medium."

Master Use License

An agreement by which the Copyright Owner of a Sound Recording grants Permission to someone else to use the Sound Recording in a visual work.

Intellectual Property

All kinds of intangible (not physical) types of property that people can own.

Idea

An idea or conception; copyright law protects the Expression of an idea but not the idea itself.

Preforming Rights

An owner of a copyright has many Exclusive Rights, including the right to perform his or her own song in public. With it, other users need Permission of the Copyright Owner to play the song on the radio or television, or in clubs, concerts, and amusement parks.

Infringement

Anyone who violates any of the Exclusive Rights of the Copyright Owner is a copyright "infringer."

Moral Rights

Certain rights given to artists who have created visual works of art (such as, a painting or sculpture) to protect the integrity of her name and works.

License

Copyright owner grants the right to exercise one or more of these rights to another person or company through these.

Term

The length to a copyright, depending on when the work itself was created.

Title

The name of a literary work or of a song; is not entitled to copyright protection. However, some courts are recognizing that a well-known title may deserve protection under other theories such as Trademark or unfair competition where the title has become well-known and there is a strong connection with a certain product or company in the mind of the public.

Mechanical License

The right to use copyrighted songs in making Sound Recordings for distribution to the public for private use is one of the Exclusive Rights of the Copyright Owner. Once a copyright owner has recorded and distributed such a work to the public in the United States or permitted someone else to do so, a "compulsory mechanical license" is available to anyone else who wants to record and distribute the work in the United States, which will require that person to pay license fees at the "compulsory" rate set in Section 115 of the Copyright Act.

Public Domain

These works belong to everyone and can be freely used without compensating the authors.

Publication/Publish

To "publish" a work means to distribute copies of that work to the public.