Requirements to Claim Copyright: Fixation

The ideas must be fixed in some tangible medium of expression.

Copyright protection is automatic, as soon as the ideas are fixed. Registering work with the Copyright Office offers benefits if the copyright is infringed.

Copyright protection is (now) immediate upon fixation: it applies to drafts and completed works, both published and unpublished.

Additional conditions that may have applied in the past (e.g., inclusion of a copyright notice) are not relevant to new work being created for the WWW.

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Copyright © April, 1997, by Carol Scheftic (based on original work at The Geometry Center and used with permission). All rights reserved.
Please send comments on this page, or requests for permission to re-use material from this page, to: scheftic@geom.umn.edu