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My understanding is that it depends on how much of the work (original
content) was done in a particular year, and the nature of the resource
you're producing. The dates serve to indicate the effort you put into your
work over a period of time. Following your examples...
A - a product that was first produced in 1998 and re-produced every year
since. For each re-production, the majority of the content was different
each year, i.e., 1999's edition contained only a small amount of 1998's
content but they were sufficiently similar to remain part of a sequence. You
want to establish copyright for the development work done each year. An
example would be a series of books called "The Year's Events" - different
content each time, and physically different books, but you're copyrighting
the overall sequence.
B - a product first produced in 1998, then again in 2002, with ongoing
development throughout the subsequent years. You may or may not have issued
'interim editions' (as in A), but what you need to establish is that the
four-year period is part of a single development cycle. An example would be
Word, which has gone through interim versions and is under constant
development but is always just the one product (Word 95, Word 97, Word 98,
Word 2000, Word 2001, Word 2002, Word X - but we think of it as "Word").
C - a product first produced in 2002. No work was done before this year. If
we were in 2003, the implication would also be that no work after that year.
If in doubt, use the format of (B), with the start date the year you began
and the end date the current year. This establishes that you currently hold
the copyright, and that you have copyright on the intellectual work over the
previous years leading up to the publication.
Outlook 2000, for example, is copyrighted 1995-1999 (the year O2K was
released). If someone claims they have copyright in Outlook 2000 dating from
after this date, the onus is on them to prove Microsoft gifted them with the
IP rights - Mr Gates & co. have laid their claim to all the work leading up
to O2K's release.
-mark
-----Original Message-----
From: Anita Lewis [mailto:anital -at- threerivers-cams -dot- com]
Sent: 17 May 2002 15:53
To: TECHWR-L
Subject: Copyright question
When displaying a copyright on a web site, which is correct?
A. 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002
B. 1998 - 2002
C. 2002
Are there circumstances in which one might be used over the other?
Mark Overton
IT Projects Officer
Sedgemoor District Council
Bridgwater House, King Square
Bridgwater
Somerset TA6 3AR
Direct line (01278) 436409.
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