Worried about copyright for your screenplay or movie script?

Screenplay writers will have heard of the need to copyright their work, often because they’re paranoid that unscrupulous individuals may wish to steal their work. It does happen, but it’s rare. Go and Google copyright theft and you won’t find too many live and proved cases. The real problem is after your screenplay has been produced into a movie on DVD or via internet download; that’s when the real copyright theft hurts you the most, because you won’t get paid a cent on illegal bootlegging scams.

Copyright protection is completed in just about the same manner the whole world over. If you’ve written it, then you have copyright protection. You don’t copyright an idea, but you can copyright a treatment and a screenplay. How that’s completed legally so you can sue another party is down to the country in which you want your copyright protection to apply.

Looking at extreme examples of (almost) compulsory registration and no registration at all (apologies if your country isn’t mentioned specifically, but you can register your work in the USA, wherever you live) here’s how they differ:

Copyright in the United States

You should lodge your document with the US Copyright Office. They send you a receipt. This can be completed online (at a reduced fee) if you have a handy word/text or PDF version of your work available.

You don’t have to update your screenplay registration as you re-write, but the final version should be registered if it varies considerably from your original. Now people can sue you for copying their work (you didn’t, did you?) and you’ll have the proof of when you registered your work. You can’t (usually) sue anyone else for copyright theft unless you can prove your copyright via the official registration process

Awards for statutory damages or attorneys fees can only be made if you’ve registered properly. It makes sense, then, to register your work before you give it anyone to read. Anyone.

Many writers will also register with the Writer’s Guild of America (WGA). Your cover will only last ten years as opposed to life plus 70 years with the Copyright Office. The WGA offers an additional layer of security; it protects your writing credit in a credit arbitration dispute. That may turn out to be important for you when a studio gets someone else to re-write your screenplay before production begins.

There are a number of profit making companies who will take on these tasks for you, for a fee. Do you need to pay someone to do it for you? Can you afford the extra charges?

The official source is http://www.copyright.gov/

If you live west of the Mississippi then this website is for you http://www.wga.org/

If you live east of the water, including Europe and so on then go to http://www.wgaeast.org/

Copyright in the UK

You have automatic copyright, having written the work in the first place.

There’s no official system for registering your work in the UK and most of the world. There are no forms to complete or fees to pay, but there are unofficial copyright registration companies that will charge you for registering with them to prove copyright, should the need appear later. These methods may cost you less in the long run as you can group together a number of screenplays within your online box.

Look professional

You can protect your work with the © symbol, but please don’t do that when you send out a spec screenplay, as this shows the expert that you might not be a professional yet. You already have the copyright, so no need to threaten that you’ll sue them if they steal your work, by inserting this symbol. It shows your insecurity. Also, don’t ask them to sign releases for your work for the same reason. Finally, don’t list your copyright number either. You have it; they don’t need to know it until they ask.

Please don’t do this

One so called’poor man’s registration is suggested by many so called experts. It involves sending your work to yourself and keeping the content unopened and date stamped. This is (almost) not worth taking the time and trouble. If someone wants to steal your work, they’ll have pre-dated envelopes ready for this purpose.

Federation Against Copyright Theft (FACT)

This official organization exists in the UK to protect against theft after the production is finished in either DVD or internet download form. It stands as its own prosecution power and may help you one day.

http://www.fact-uk.org.uk/

Finally, please don’t panic that people are out to steal your ideas, your screenplay. If 100,000 screenplays a year are getting written and registered in the US alone, then how many others are being written at the same time? There’s a chance that someone else may have a similar idea. You need to get there first with a high quality screenplay; then you can (almost) forget about the rest.

Today’s guest post is from scriptwriter and script doctor Stephen Hall. If you need help getting your screenplay ready to show to a reader, producer, studio or agent, check out his screenplay analysis service first. No second chance to make a first impression!

I’ve been writing about copyright for a long time. In fact, two of my early articles on this blog’s predecessor were titled Copyright: rent, don’t sell and Copyrights and copy wrongs. You could call it a recurring obsession.

Now, I’ve been talking about copyright again, but this time it’s to Sologig News. Jeremy Schnitker emailed me last week with a few questions about this important issue for freelancers. I was pleased to be asked. You can read the full interview on the Sologig site.

Copyright protected works (see the previous tip for a definition) are known as intellectual property. Intellectual property is a bit like real estate – it can be bought, sold, transferred and inherited, though only with your written permission.

The key thing to remember as a freelance writer is that ideas themselves are not protected but the way ideas are expressed is protected. So if you think of an idea for an article, that isn’t protected; when you write it, it is. It’s the information you select and the way you arrange it that makes it unique.

When you give someone the right to publish your writing, you are assigning that right temporarily (a bit like renting out your house). As a writer, you’ll want to avoid signing away any of your rights permanently. Instead, be clear on what rights you are assigning. First serial rights are normal. This gives the publisher the right to publish your material first in whatever country or region (for example, the UK or US) the rights apply to. Once the material has been published, all rights revert to you. Some publishers will also request online rights and the right to keep your work in an online archive. You’ll want to make sure these rights are for a limited period or are non-exclusive, so you can make the most of your material.

A key term to be aware of is moral right. This is the right to be credited as the author (have a byline) and to object to alterations or errors which might damage your reputation (known as derogatory treatment of your work). It also includes the right not to have work falsely attributed to you. In other words, no one should say you wrote something if you didn’t.

So what do you do if someone tries to pass off something you’ve written as their own work? If your copyright has been breached you can take the infringer to court and try to get any offending material seized or destroyed. However, there are two things that could damage your case. The first is if the person commits innocent infringement, which means the person genuinely didn’t know you owned the copyright; the second is if you have previously allowed someone to use copyrighted work without complaint. This is known as acquiescence

As a freelance writer, you’ll need to be aware of the legal protection your work enjoys so you don’t sign away rights that you should retain. Here are some some key aspects of UK copyright law you should be aware of.

In the UK, copyright is an automatic and unregistered right. That means there’s no need to apply specially or fill in any forms. Copyright takes effect as soon as protected material is produced. Copyright protected material is known as works and there are nine types of work that are automatically protected. These are literary work (including newspaper articles), dramatic, musical, artistic (photos, drawings, diagrams, maps etc), sound recordings, films, broadcasts, cable programmes and published editions of works.

In order for material to have copyright protection it has to result from independent intellectual effort. In other words, you must have put some work into it. You’ll need to be able to prove this if challenged, so although it’s not obligatory, you can protect yourself by sending a copy of your work to yourself by recorded delivery and leaving the envelope unopened. Recorded delivery post is date stamped so you’ll be able to prove that your work existed on a particular date.

Copyright lasts for the duration of the author’s life plus 70 years for literary, dramatic or musical works. Different periods apply for films (70 years after the last to die of the director, screenplay authors and musical director), sound recordings (50 years) and published editions (25 years). People are allowed to publish excerpts from your copyrighted work for the purpose of news, review or criticism. This is known as fair dealing. Works used in this way should be properly acknowledged.

More on copyright in the next tip.