Excerpts from the “The Copyright Book: A Practical Guide

Fourth Edition by William S. Strong

The Three Major Fundamentals of Copyright Law

Fixation

“Fixation is the act of rendering a creation in some tangible form in which, or by means of which, other people can perceive it.  Even the word perceive has its own special legal meaning; in the law’s definition one “perceives” a work of choreography, for example, or a work of music, by seeing on a piece of paper the notation that enables a performer to reproduce the work.  Thus a musical work may be fixed in sheet music, as well as on tape.  On the other hand performing the musical work, without taping it simultaneously, does not fix it because the performance is not tangible.  It is heard and is gone.”

“The great importance of the act of fixation is that it marks the beginning of your federal copyright.  You obtain copyright under the federal law as of the instant that you fix your work in tangible form.  Fixation also draws the boundary line between federal copyright protection and so-called common law copyright, which is largely the prerogative of the individual states.  (Common law is the term for law that is built up over the years by judicial opinions; in the copyright field there has not been a great deal of variation from one state to another).”

“Until January 1, 1978, common law copyright protected all unpublished works except those that were registered with the U.S. Copyright Office; now it protects only works that have not been fixed in tangible form.”

“Rights in works that have not been fixed are difficult to prove and difficult to protect; it is not even easy to prove what the work is if there is no tangible copy of it.”

Originality

“The law requires that a work be the product of your own mind in order to be copyrightable.   Originality is not by itself sufficient; facts, even if they are facts that no one else has ever discovered, are regarded as the common property of all of us, as are scientific discoveries, mathematical equations, and historical theories.  Facts are not copyrightable because they are not human inventions; theories are not copyrightable because they are ideals, not expression.  But although originality is not sufficient in itself, it is essential all the same.”

Expression

“The third requirement of copyrightability is that the work be “expression” and not “ideal.”  It is an old truism in copyright law that you cannot copyright an idea but only your expression of it: ideas, like facts, are in the public domain.

“The rule that an idea cannot be copyrighted has an interesting corollary: copyright in the expression of an idea will not enforced so as to prevent other people from putting the idea to practical use.”