CADDManager on May 17th, 2009

Who owns your CAD Standard? You do or your firm does.  Be sure to include a copyright statement on every page. It is not a big deal to add one. It protects you from unauthorized use.

All you need to include is a copyright statement. Update the date on the copyright every time you update the standard. In fact,even if you do not add a copyright statement, it is still covered.

If you publish your CAD Standard, even internally only, how do you know your copyrights are in place? Copyrighting is not complicated or difficult; there is a quick and easy way to copyright anything you produce, at least in the USA.

Copyright law in the United States is extremely generous toward the creators and owners of new works. Legal copyright protection is in effect immediately and automatically upon the creation of any “original work of authorship fixed in any tangible medium of expression.”

In other words, a copyright notice is not necessary for your work to comply with U.S. Copyright law. For example, when authors, webmasters, amateur writers or anyone else submits a creative work of any kind for publishing, that work is automatically copyrighted. No copyright notice is necessary to be legally binding.

But – include one anyway. It lasts for the length of your life – plus 70 years.  If you wrote it for your firm and they paid you to do it, then the company owns it and the copyright lasts for 95 years.

Read more about US copyrights here. (http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ1.pdf)

Example:

Copyright © 2004, 2006, 2009, CAD Manager Journal – www.caddmanager.com – All Rights Reserved

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