Copyright symbol
© | |
---|---|
Copyright sign | |
In Unicode | U+00A9 © COPYRIGHT SIGN (©, ©) |
Different from | |
Different from | U+24B8 Ⓒ CIRCLED LATIN CAPITAL LETTER C |
Related | |
See also | U+2117 ℗ SOUND RECORDING COPYRIGHT (℗) U+1F12F 🄯 COPYLEFT SYMBOL ( |
The copyright symbol, or copyright sign, © (a circled capital letter C for copyright), is the symbol used in copyright notices for works other than sound recordings.[1] The use of the symbol is described by the Universal Copyright Convention.[2] The symbol is widely recognized but, under the Berne Convention, is no longer required in most nations to assert a new copyright.
no
Berne Convention
In countries party to the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works, including the United States, a copyright notice is not required to be displayed in order for copyright to be established; rather, the creation of the work automatically establishes copyright.[3] The United States was one of the later accedents to Berne, implementing its adherence to the treaty with the Berne Convention Implementation Act of 1988, which became effective March 1, 1989,[4] making the notice optional. However, the copyright notice remains material in one instance: a copyright infringer cannot claim innocent infringement as a partial defense to mitigate its damages where the infringer had access to a copy of the work that bore a copyright notice.[5]
The majority of nations now belong to Berne, and thus do not require copyright notices to obtain copyright.
Digital representation
The character is mapped in Unicode as U+00A9 © COPYRIGHT SIGN.[6] Unicode also has U+24B8 Ⓒ CIRCLED LATIN CAPITAL LETTER C and U+24D2 ⓒ CIRCLED LATIN SMALL LETTER C,[7] which have an appearance similar to the character.
Typing the character
Because the © symbol is not available on typical typewriters or in ASCII, it has long been common to approximate this symbol with the characters (c) (c in parentheses), a practice that has been accepted by the U.S. Copyright Office under both the 1909[8] and 1976[9][10] U.S. Copyright Acts. Word processing software with an autocorrection facility can recognise this three-character sequence and convert it automatically to a single copyright symbol.
On modern computer systems, the formal © symbol can be generated using any of these methods (keyboard shortcuts):
- Windows: Alt+0169[11]
- Mac: ⌥ Option+g[12]
- Linux: ComposeOC.[13]
- ChromeOS: Ctrl+⇧ Shift+u, a9, then ↵ Enter or Space.[14]
- HTML:
©
or©
[15]
Related symbols
- The sound recording copyright symbol is the symbol ℗ (the capital letter P enclosed by a circle), and is used to designate copyright in a sound recording.[16]
- The copyleft symbol 🄯 is a backwards capital letter C in a circle (copyright symbol © mirrored). It has no legal meaning.[17]
See also
- Enclosed C ⟨Ⓒ or ⓒ⟩
- Registered trademark symbol ⟨®⟩
- Trademark symbol ⟨™⟩
- Service mark symbol ⟨℠⟩
References
- ^ 17 U.S.C. § 401
- ^ Universal Copyright Convention, Article III, §1. (Paris text, July 24, 1971.)
- ^ Molotsky, Irvin (October 21, 1988). "Senate Approves Joining Copyright Convention". The New York Times. Retrieved September 22, 2011.
- ^ "United States Joins The Berne Copyright Convention". Insights Publications. January 1989. Retrieved February 28, 2019.
- ^ (Evidentiary weight of notice)
- ^ "C1 Controls and Latin-1 Supplement | Range: 0080–00FF" (PDF). Unicode Consortium. 2021.
- ^ "Enclosed Alphanumerics | Range: 2460–24FF" (PDF). Unicode Consortium. 2021.
- ^ U.S. Copyright Office, Compendium of Copyright Office Practices, first ed. (1967, rev. July 1, 1973), § 4.2.2
- ^ U.S. Copyright Office, Compendium of Copyright Office Practices, second ed. (1978, rev. 1984), § 1005.01(c)
- ^ U.S. Copyright Office, Compendium of Copyright Office Practices, third ed. (2014, rev. September 29, 2017), § 2204.4(A)
- ^ Sartain, J. D. (February 3, 2020). "How to get special characters using Alt key codes or the Word Symbols library". PCWorld. Retrieved February 13, 2020.
- ^ Haslam, Karen (August 8, 2018). "How to copy and paste on Mac, plus 39 other useful keyboard shortcuts". Macworld UK. Retrieved July 18, 2019.
- ^ "Enter special characters". help.gnome.org. gnome.org. Retrieved July 18, 2019.
- ^ Jack Busch (April 20, 2018). "Type Special Characters with a Chromebook (Accents, Symbols, Em Dashes)". groovypost.com. Retrieved February 28, 2020.
- ^ Carey, Patrick (2008). New Perspectives on HTML and XHTML, Brief. Cengage Learning. p. 131. ISBN 978-1-4239-2544-6.
- ^ Stephen Fishman (2010), "The Copyright Symbol", The Public Domain, p. 356, ISBN 978-1-4133-1205-8
- ^ Hall, G. Brent (2008). Open Source Approaches in Spatial Data Handling. Springer. p. 29. ISBN 978-3-540-74830-4. Additional ISBN 978-3-540-74830-4. See Open Source Approaches in Spatial Data Handling at Google Books, page 29.