Copyright

Put simply, as a citizen of a country that recognizes copyrights, copyright protects from copying by others, your original expressions when put down in tangible form, such as, for example, when such original expressions are tangibly produced as writing, artwork, music, photography, etcetera.  It is the original form of expression that is protected, not the underlying function or concepts which are being described or portrayed.  The protection is personal to you, that is, is owned by you automatically as soon as you reduce your expressions to tangible form, unless this is done as an employee in the ordinary course of employment, in which case the copyright belongs to your employer.  The expression must have some amount of originality, more than, for example, merely arranging some facts alphabetically in a list.

Copyright may be registered in the United States and Canada which gives you some advantage, a presumption of your rights, in the event that you have to enforce your rights.  Enforcement of your rights typically means suing in court the person or company who is doing the copying.  These people or companies are referred to as “infringers”, that is, those who are infringing your copyright.  In order to infringe, an infringer does not necessarily have to copy your entire work, for example doesn't have to copy your entire book, song or video, but only has to have copied a substantial portion.  In the past, copyright infringement has been found for copying a page from a book or a musical phrase from a song.  You could infringe my copyright in this haphazard jotting down of my thoughts by copying only a single page, or perhaps only a single paragraph.  That doesn't mean that I can stop you from writing about copyright, it just means that you have to do it in your own words, or get my permission to use my words.

There are some exceptions to copyright protection however.  Quite often these exceptions are referred to as "fair use".  The fair use exceptions vary from country to country.  For example, fair use exceptions are quite broad in the United States, allowing copying for the purpose of critique, or parody.  They are relatively narrow in Canada, providing some exceptions for libraries, universities, etcetera.  Typically in Canada it is a false hope to think that you can explain away your copyright infringement as being legitimate fair use of someone else's work.

Another form of exception extends to three dimensional works which are works of art.  For example, copyright may exist in architectural plans or blue prints to make a building the form of a boat hull, respectively, which are built following the plans.  Three dimensional objects may be protected as to their aesthetic appearance not dictated by function by the use of an industrial design registration (as it is called in Canada) or a “design patent” (as it is called in the United States).  See the following section for a brief description of phase.  The functionality of an object, if it can be protected at all, is protected by utility patents, that is, what are commonly thought of as "patents" per se.

An exception to the exception to copyright protection for three dimensional objects is ornamentation applied to the surface of a three dimensional object.