“Elementary, my dear Hamlet!” – Copyright, Public Domain & You

Today, Robert Smedley gives us a primer on copyright and public domain, and how they affect writers. He promises to make it fun.

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Come with me now on a journey through time, space, and copyright law. Don’t worry, it won’t be dull. I promise. No, really. I promise. This isn’t an article about the ins and outs of copyright law – this is just a few simple, very basic, facts; the sort of things all writers should know. We begin in the future…

Sherlock Holmes Escapes Copyright

2022 AD, is a year when you’ll likely start to see an increase in the number of new Sherlock Holmes stories published by authors who aren’t Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Why? Because 2022 is when Holmes fully leaves copyright and enters the public domain, which means that anyone – you, me, anyone – can use him in their books. He joins such figures as Captain Nemo, Ebenezer Scrooge, Dracula, Hercules, and Cinderella. You may think Holmes is already in the public sphere. Well yes and no. You see, Holmes is a maddeningly grey area for copyright lawyers. All but one of his stories are now public domain. Whether that one story still under copyright means the character is under copyright, no one is quite sure. All anyone knows is that come 2022, the Great Detective will be fully jettisoned from the safety of author-ownership, and thousands of writers want to get their hands on him. Why have they had to wait this long to get to write about Holmes? Well for that we need to go back to 1886 and to Berne, Switzerland, for the founding of the Berne Convention, and copyright law as we know it…

The Birth of Copyright

Instigated by Les Miserables author Victor Hugo, the Berne Convention formalised copyright laws and guaranteed the right of you, the author, over your work. And it’s still in place, now covering 164 countries. So whether you’re in the US the UK or Uruguay, you’re seen as the owner of your writing and it can’t be exploited or copied without your prior consent, no matter which of those 164 countries it goes to. On top of that, there are half a dozen other separate laws and acts protecting your work, plus the individual laws of your country. So sleep soundly, your characters are safe. Thanks Victor Hugo!

It’s Easier Than You Think…

A lot of first-time writers get antsy about copyrighting their story and characters. They needn’t be. As soon as you express your idea, whether by writing it down or recording it or putting on it on in the form of a puppet theatre and videotaping it, it’s protected by copyright. You don’t need to apply for copyright. You don’t even need to put a © after you title. I wish I’d known that when I first started out. It would have saved me a lot of time and ©s. If you really want to protect your work, get a photocopy or save it on a USB, then post it to yourself. The postal stamp will be proof of date of your idea. Just don’t open the envelope.

Copyright only covers the way the idea is expressed, not the idea itself. You know how Avatar is basically Pocahontas? Well that’s the perfect example of the difference between idea and expression. Both have the same ideas, but both present them differently. You can copy the idea (ie: people meeting an alien culture), but not the expression (wheelchair-bound marine meeting big blue people). No lawsuits for you, crafty James Cameron!

Thanks to the Berne Convention and others, your work is protected across the globe: it can’t be copied, distributed or performed without your consent. You are the sole owner of the copyright. You also have ‘moral rights’, which protect an author’s works as an expression of their personality. Basically it stops someone coming along and changing your book to make you look like a nutcase.

How long do these lovely benefits last? The length of author copyright is the duration of the author’s life, plus 50-75 years after their death. So your protagonist and their plot is untouchable long after you’re just a footnote in someone else’s life. After that, they fall, Dante-esque into the public domain… Dum dum duuuum!

Public Domain – Go Nuts!

I may have accidentally put into your head the idea that the public domain is like a kids’ toy box of free-to-use characters. If I have, then good. There’s no catch; the intellectual property rights of characters and their stories have expired and they’re anyones to use and write about. Only occasionally will you find a character who has strings attached, like Winnie the Pooh or Peter Pan, but they’re rare special cases. It’s always best to check, and that can generally be accomplished with a quick Google.

There’s not much else to say about the public domain, except for the big fact that you can’t copyright a public domain character. Marvel Comics have been producing Thor comics for 50 years now. And if you want to write your own comic/book/puppet theatre show about Thor there’s not a damn thing they can do to stop you (unless you copy their design of Thor or stories etc.), because public domain characters are just that: public. I can write and publish a book about Captain Nemo and you can do the same and so can everyone else in the world. He’s ours now. So is his story. Everything from his Nautilus to his motives, right down to the life preservers. Yours and mine. Whether there’s any profit to be had in writing about him or other public domain dwellers is a different story entirely, and one for another day…

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So that’s it. Everything you need to know if you’re an author starting out. I’m no copyright expert, so if there’s something you feel has been missed and would like to add, or if you’ve a question, then please get in touch in the comments.

Images courtesy of genvessel and Jim Linwood.