Originally published January 2010 and most recently updated December 30, 2021 to reflect useful links, images, and other information.

© is for Copyright? I know I shouldn’t be, but I am always surprised at how little people know about copyright. To me and many others — pros and amateurs — the little “c” in the Copyright symbol is part of the basic ABCs of photography. You can find all sorts of appropriate principles for A and B, but C is definitely for Copyright.

Do you really need to put your copyright notice on your image? The technical answer is no, at least for images produced after the late 80s, but it does come with a big BUT.

According to Circular 22 put out by the Copyright Office, the “Berne Convention Implementation Act of 1988 reduced formalities [of establishing copyright to one’s work], most notably making the addition of the previously mandatory copyright notice optional. ” Now, to the big BUT…

If someone steals your image, you have no recourse except to trust in the goodness of the thief’s heart and his wonderful ethics. Yeah, right! A lot of good that will do you … that and a cup of overpriced coffee.

Embedding your copyright notice into your image metadata, putting it on your website, requesting in writing that those who have negotiated rights to use your photograph post your copyright notice, putting this information in your invoices and deliveries to a website other than your own, etc., all serve to put people on notice that you value the copyright to your images and you are doing everything you can to protect that right.

To make sure I wasn’t giving out erroneous information, I went to long-time friend and intellectual-property-rights expert, attorney David MacTavish in the Chicago region. While he was ASMP’s legal counsel, he worked closely with the Copyright Office to help effect improvements in the original Copyright Act of 1976. Before he retired, his law firm represented a number of clients in many creative fields.

“While a copyright owner’s work will no longer fall into the public domain, as it once did,” David says, “a copyright infringer can use the absence of notice to let a wrongdoer claim innocent infringement. That is, ‘I didn’t know the work was copyrighted.’”

So, Why Do I Want to Copyright My Image?

“Hey, what do I care about copyright?” you ask. “I’m just doing this for fun…”

We’ve already answered that question, but let’s cite some examples:
• Do you want XYZ T-shirt company to steal your photograph and make thousands of dollars off it, giving you nothing?
• Do you want someone appropriating your photograph and claiming it as his/her own work?
• Are you comfortable with someone downloading a photograph of your daughter or granddaughter and using it in an ad about teen pregnancy, AIDS, or worse, child pornography?
• Would you like to find that wonderful photograph of your dad working out the solution to a difficult nuclear-physics problem in an article on Alzheimer’s?
• How about a photograph that Arnie made back in 1983, several years before the Berne Convention Implementation Act of 1988, that a major stock house copied in several iterations? Presumably, they were making quite a few stock sales. Unfortunately, the agency for whom Arnie made the photograph could not find the record of the copyright registration, so Arnie could not sue for damages (more on this later).

BUT, when we wrote the stock house in question, they disclaimed any impropriety or guilt, yet, when I wrote, listing the agency with whom Arnie had done the image and the date of the copyright notice (all his slides were stamped with it), we noticed that they very quickly, albeit quietly, removed all knock-offs from their available images. We did our part and made sure this image was registered (yes, again, this time as a published work) with the Copyright Office right away after we discovered the theft (copyright infringement).

Without your copyright on your images, people figure it’s part of public domain and free for the taking. And with Social Media, Facebook for one, stripping all metadata off images, we never publish an image without both a visible watermark and a Digimarc (invisible embedded watermark).

David also brings up another excellent point, “You also have to consider that not using a notice will likely have future ramifications if Congress passes an orphan-works bill. I’ve heard that the feeling is this will likely happen no matter what owners’ rights groups do, so any copyright owner not using a notice is placing her/his work in jeopardy because the work won’t be identifiable.”

I won’t get into that can of worms here, but for those interested in the whole orphan works challenge for photographers, see the Copyright Office’s report as well as ASMP’s Position on Orphan Works.

Make Your Copyright Stick – Register

Register? What does that mean?

Quite simply, for $55, one can put in an application to register an unlimited number of unpublished photographs made in the same year with eCO, the electronic Copyright Office. You’ll get an e-mail receipt from the Copyright Office immediately, although it make take months before you actually receive the Certificate of Registration. Meanwhile, if someone steals your image, you now have recourse with teeth with the above receipt in hand.

Published images cost more and currently have to be registered by snail mail. Everything you wanted to know about Copyright can be found on the Copyright Office’s website. It’s well worth your while perusing it.

Another resource, and perhaps a bit less daunting, with an excellent overview of copyright can be found on the ASMP (American Society of Media Photographers) website. ASMP also teamed up with PhotoShelter to produce The Photographer’s Guide to Copyright for which you will have to register, a really simple process.

By registering your copyright, you make your copyright stick.

As our friend David points out, in cases when a copyright infringement is discovered, “At some later date, the owner contacts a lawyer who tells them the work(s) must be registered before a lawsuit can be filed. This has taken up to 18 months, and even with electronic registration, it is taking almost a year for certification. I find very few copyright owners have the funds or want to pay the additional money to speed up the registration process that can be done in preparation for litigation.”

Sure, you can go after the company and let them know that their use of your photograph is unauthorized, but realistically, you have no teeth against a big corporation. You are merely an annoying gnat. On the other hand, registering your copyright may entitle you to statutory damages. This has several ramifications:

• If you bring suit and win (and a registered copyright greatly increases your chances), the copyright infringer will not only have to pay you all lost income for the image (and then some), but they will be responsible for paying all your legal fees;
• An intellectual-property lawyer may be more willing to take your case on a contingency basis because of the above; and
• At the very least, if you do not want to go through the time and hassle of a copyright-infringement case, you have clout when you instruct the infringer’s big-name lawyer to stop the unauthorized use of your image and hopefully pay you for lost income and then some; most lawyers will tuck their tails between their legs when you can cite the copyright registration number.

First, however, you have to have a good, legal copyright notice.

Copyright Notice

It’s amazing the number of photographers, even pros, who don’t know a legal form of a copyright notice, let alone all three:
• © YYYY Name
• Copyright YYYY Name
• Copr. YYYY Name

Thus, mine would be © 2022 Margo Taussig Pinkerton. All Rights Reserved. The “All Rights Reserved.” is not absolutely necessary, but it does serve as a strong reminder to others that your image is copyrighted at the moment you click the shutter and that you are the person who owns all rights to it. We also recommend that you type your name in Upper and Lower Case (Initial Caps). Some people type their names in ALL CAPS THAT ARE ACTUALLY MORE DIFFICULT TO READ THAN Words in Upper and Lower Case. This is from someone (moi) who used to work for a well-respected publishing house.

So, how do you make that cute little © symbol with the BIG impact? It’s really very easy.
• PC shortcut for ©: ALT-0169
• On keypad, not with numbers across top;
• Use FN (function key)-NUM LOCK (number lock ) to use number pad on laptop (if you can’t find it, start with the M key and look carefully for the zero there, too);
• On certain PC laptops, you’ll have to activate the number lock, then press ALT-0169. In some cases, even that doesn’t work, so go to Start>Windows Help and Support>Open Character Map>Click to Open Character Map or some such path.
• Mac shortcut for ©: OPT/ALT-g
• An easy option is to highlight this © symbol, press CTRL-C (PC) or CMD-C (Mac) to copy it, then paste it into a new location by pressing CTRL-V (PC) or CMD-V (Mac). Ta-daaa! You’re all set!

So, none of the following is a legal copyright notice:
• © 2022
• 2022 Margo Taussig Pinkerton
• Margo Taussig Pinkerton 2022
• © Margo Taussig Pinkerton (without the year), unless it is for a “pictorial, graphic, or sculptural work, with accompanying textual matter, if any” that “is reproduced in or on greeting cards, postcards, stationery, jewelry, dolls, toys, or any useful article.” according to the Copyright Act of 1976.
• No court will accept anything using (c) as a substitute for Copyright, Copr. or ©; if you have an older camera body that only has the (c), beware if you are one of those who notes your copyright in the metadata … better to use Copyright or Copr. to be safe

I went to another good friend and long-time intellectual-property attorney in Boston, Andrew “Drew” Epstein, of Barker, Epstein & Loscocco, and asked him about variations on noting the three critical elements of the copyright notice. He pointed me to another document from the Copyright Office, Circular 1, “Copyright Basics”. As he said, a judge in a country observing the Berne Convention would probably accept Margo Taussig Pinkerton © 2022, but as Circular 1 notes by example, the commonly-accepted form is copyright first, then year, then name. Note his use of the word “probably” that does not sound like a guarantee to me.  I’ll stick to the three forms above, especially in the US where BIG Businesses have a history of running roughshod over us creators.

Some people think that writing Copyright © 2022 Margo Taussig Pinkerton makes their copyright more legal. Sorry, folks; it is simply redundant. That little © symbol packs a powerful punch all by itself! The exception might be if you are dealing with an entity that cannot cope with the © symbol, but if that is the case, perhaps you should not be dealing with that entity! And always remember that (c) in parentheses is never a substitute for ©!

For More Information & Recap of Resources

The United States Copyright Office is a power branch of our judicial system. On www.copyright.gov, there is a wealth of information, including Copyright Basics (that I checked for possible changes in the law), FAQs for the uninitiated (and an excellent refresher course for the experienced), and even a direct link to eCO (the electronic Copyright Office) where you can register your photographs and websites online for a lower fee than by snail mail.

So … © is for Copyright … Create a Copyright Template

You can protect your images by placing your copyright on them right during your importing process. Just add your copyright notice to your metadata template and use it as part of your importing process. Check out your importing/imaging program of choice, and there should be detailed instructions of how to edit or make your own metadata template. And as noted above, there are only three legal forms of your copyright notice. Make sure you choose one of them. And don’t forget, that all these copyright notices have to be updated each year, so review Copyright Notice Updates.

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