Intellectual Property Protection for Authors

by erin on January 8, 2010

Intellectual property refers to the ideas, concepts, and written material created by someone. Intellectual property, when created by an employee as part of their job, is owned by the employer. However, intellectual property created on one’s own time or while working for one’s self is owned by the originator.

Intellectual property, such as novels and articles, songs and graphics, belong to the creator unless they have sold those rights. For example, writing an article on contract or for pay typically comes with the stipulation that payment is given in exchange for the contractor receiving full property rights to the work.

Authors who write their own material, be they articles or novels, often lose sight of where the boundaries of the intellectual property begin and end. What intellectual property concerns do authors need to take into consideration?

1. If the article was sold for one publication, they typically cannot reuse a rewritten version unless it is at least 30% unique. In most cases, it needs to be 100% unique.

2. If an author posts a draft outline of a plot in a discussion forum, they lose all rights to the idea. If someone takes the same plot line and uses it in their own story, the concept was already in the public domain and thus the intellectual property rights have been eroded if not destroyed.

3. Many genres have “universes”. For example, the “Star Trek Universe” includes all characters, settings, and back-story of the Star Trek books and movies. The Roddenberry estate controls the rights to that entire “universe”. Authors who infringe on that intellectual property risk lawsuits, no matter how unique their own characters and plot may be.

4. If an author contributes to a multi-author story, the rights are ambiguous if not non-existent. In many cases, the individual who is the lead collaborator or the editor retains the intellectual property rights to any story generated.

5. Posting a story on one’s blog may invalidate later intellectual property rights to copyright the work. Putting a copyright symbol next to the title helps. Putting one’s full legal name and title of the work is essential.

6. Beware of the legal terms when selling stories or articles. If the contract states “all rights” are transferred, the author has lost all intellectual property rights to that work. They can then never use that story in their own anthologies or expand it into a novel later.

7. Authors may want to consider periodically running their own articles and stories against plagiarism checkers. In a world of easy copy and paste, it is not difficult for someone to copy the author’s work and slap their own name on it and then sell the story or article to someone else. This is occurring frequently on ehow.com and hubpages.com, but it happens all over the web as well. The earlier the infringement is caught, the more likely the originating author can assert their intellectual property rights. This may include providing proof of their own original publication of the work to publishing web sites, thus leading to the blocking of the offending copier and payment to the original author – as is due under their intellectual property rights.

Find out more about protecting your intellectual property and other legal issues at http://walkerandnovick.com/

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