Copyright blurb?

["Geoff Hart" <Geoff-h -at- mtl -dot- feric -dot- ca>]

Kevin Feeman <<...was asked to come up with a standard 
copyright blurb for our company's documentation which will 
have to go through Marketing and Legal to make sure it is 
correct.>>

If it's a legal issue, don't waste your time: none of us non-
lawyers is qualified to write something that will pass legal 
muster, and after all, that's why your company has lawyers, 
isn't it? The last update of the copyright legislation I have in 
my hands (for Canada, but that should be essentially identical 
for the U.S., since we're both signatories of the Berne and 
Universal Copyright conventions) states that you don't 
actually need to include anything. If you do, the standard 
copyright notice contains only three things:
- the word "copyright" and/or the (C) symbol
- the name of the copyright holder
- the year of publication.

If your company really wants to add legal gobbledygook 
such as "all rights reserved", it's redundant, but leave that up 
to the lawyers. And if you're really worried about legal issues, 
you need to formally register the copyright. You can still 
challenge someone in court without a registered copyright, 
but your rights to damages are severely limited.

--Geoff Hart @8^{)}  geoff-h -at- mtl -dot- feric -dot- ca  (Pointe-Claire, Quebec)
"Perhaps there is something deep and profound behind all those sevens, something just calling out for us to discover it. But I 
suspect 
that it is only a pernicious, Pythagorean coincidence." George Miller, "The Magical Number Seven" (1956)