Copyright 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.
 ©
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 ( )

US law
In the United States, the Berne Convention Implementation Act of 1988, effective March 1,
1989, removed the requirement for the copyright symbol from U.S. copyright law, but its
presence or absence is legally significant on works published before that date, and it
continues to affect remedies available to a copyright holder whose work is infringed.

History
Prior symbols indicating a work's copyright status are seen in Scottish almanacs of the
1670s; books included a printed copy of the local coat-of-arms to indicate their authenticity.[3]

A copyright notice was first required in the U.S. by the Copyright Act of 1802.[4] It was lengthy:
"Entered according to act of Congress, in the year , by A. B., in the office of the Librarian
of Congress, at Washington." In general, this notice had to appear on the copyrighted work
itself, but in the case of a "work of the fine arts", such as a painting, it could instead be
inscribed "on the face of the substance on which [the work of art] shall be mounted".[5] The
Copyright Act was amended in 1874 to allow a much shortened notice: "Copyright, 18 , by
A. B."[6]

The copyright symbol © was introduced in the United States in section 18 of the Copyright
Act of 1909,[7] and initially applied only to pictorial, graphic and sculptural works.[8] The
Copyright Act of 1909 was meant to be a complete rewrite and overhaul of existing copyright
law. As originally proposed in the draft of the bill, copyright protection required putting the
word "copyright" or a sanctioned abbreviation on the work of art itself. This included
paintings, the argument being that the frame was detachable. In conference sessions among
copyright stakeholders on the proposed bill, conducted in 1905 and 1906, representatives of
artist organizations objected to this requirement, wishing to put no more on the work itself
than the artist's name. As a compromise, the possibility was created to add a relatively
unintrusive mark, the capital letter C within a circle, to appear on the work itself next to the
artist's name, indicating the existence of a more elaborate copyright notice elsewhere that
was still to be allowed to be placed on the mounting.[9] Indeed, the version of the bill that was
submitted to Congress in 1906, compiled by the Copyright Commission under the direction of
the Librarian of Congress, Herbert Putnam, contained a provision that a special copyright
symbol, the letter C inclosed within a circle, could be used instead of the word "copyright" or
the abbreviation "copr.", but only for a limited category of copyrightable works, including
works of art but not ordinary books or periodicals.[10]

The formulation of the 1909 Act was left unchanged when it was incorporated in 1946 as title
17 of the United States Code.

A 1954 amendment to the law extended the use of the symbol to any published copyrighted
work: the symbol was allowed as an alternative to "Copyright" or "Copr." in all copyright
notices.[8][11]

US copyright notice
In the United States, the copyright notice consists of:[12]

"©" or the word "Copyright" or

abbreviation "Copr.";
the year of first publication of the
copyrighted work; and
identification of the owner of the
copyright, either by name, abbreviation,
 or other designation by which they are
generally known.
For example, for a work first published in 2011: © 2011 John Doe

The notice was once required in order to receive copyright protection in the United States, but
in countries respecting the Berne convention this is no longer the case.[13] The United States
joined the Berne Convention effective March 1, 1989.[14]

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.[13] 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,[15] 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.[16]

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.[17] Unicode also has
U+24B8 Ⓒ CIRCLED LATIN CAPITAL LETTER C and U+24D2 ⓒ CIRCLED LATIN SMALL LETTER C,[18]
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[19] and 1976[20][21]
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 + 0 1 6 9 [22]

Mac: ⌥ Option + g [23]
Linux: Compose O C .[24]
ChromeOS: Ctrl + ⇧ Shift + u , a 9 , then
↵ Enter or Space .[25]

HTML: © or © [26]

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.[27]
The copyleft symbol 🄯 is a backwards
capital letter C in a circle (copyright
symbol © mirrored). It has no legal
meaning.[28]

See also

Law
portal

Enclosed C ⟨Ⓒ or ⓒ⟩
Registered trademark symbol ⟨®⟩
Trademark symbol ⟨™⟩
Service mark symbol ⟨℠⟩
References

1. 17 U.S.C. § 401 (https://www.law.cornell.e

du/uscode/text/17/401)
2. Universal Copyright Convention, Article III,
§1. (Paris text, July 24, 1971.)
3. Mann, Alastair J. (2010). "A Mongrel of
Early Modern Copyright". In Deazley,
Ronan; Kretschmer, Martin; Bently, Lionel
(eds.). Privilege and property: essays on
the history of copyright (https://www.ope
nbookpublishers.com/reader/26#page/7
5/mode/1up) . Open Book Publishers.
p. 62. ISBN 978-1-906924-18-8.
4. "Copyright Law Revision Study Number 7,
page 6" (https://www.copyright.gov/histor
y/studies/study7.pdf) (PDF). United
States Copyright Office. United States
Government Printing Office. Retrieved
14 June 2013.
5. Copyright Act of 1870, §97.
6. 1874 Amendment to the Copyright Act of
1870, §1.
7. Copyright Act of 1909, §18
8. Copyright Law Revision: Study 7: Notice
of Copyright (https://www.copyright.gov/h
istory/studies/study7.pdf) (PDF).
Washington, D.C.: United States
Government Printing Office. 1960. p. 11.
 9. Arguments before the Committees on
Patents of the Senate and House of
Representatives, conjointly, on the bills S.
6330 and H.R. 19853, to amend and
consolidate the acts respecting copyright.
June 6–9, 1906 (https://books.google.co
m/books?id=ZlA-AAAAYAAJ&pg=PA68) .
Government Printing Office. 1906. p. 68.
10. "Proposed Copyright Legislation" (https://
books.google.com/books?id=fEhppVLGx
R0C&q=%22proposed+copyright+legislati
on%22&pg=PA87) . The Writer. XVIII (6):
87. June 1906.
11. An Act to amend title 17, United States
Code, entitled "Copyrights", Pub. L. 83–
743 (https://uslaw.link/citation/us-law/pu
blic/83/743) , 68 Stat. 1030 (https://legisl
ink.org/us/stat-68-1030) , enacted
August 31, 1954.
12. 17 U.S.C. § 401(b) (https://www.law.corne
ll.edu/uscode/text/17/401#b)
13. Molotsky, Irvin (October 21, 1988).
"Senate Approves Joining Copyright
Convention" (https://www.nytimes.com/1
988/10/21/arts/senate-approves-joining-c
opyright-convention.html) . The New York
Times. Retrieved September 22, 2011.
14. Circular 38A: International Copyright
Relations of the United States (https://cop
yright.gov/circs/circ38a.pdf) (PDF). U.S.
Copyright Office. 2014. p. 2. Retrieved
March 5, 2015.
15. "United States Joins The Berne Copyright
Convention" (https://web.archive.org/we
b/20201204202451/https://www.gesmer.
com/news/united-states-joins-the-berne-c
opyright-convention) . Insights
Publications. January 1989. Archived
from the original (https://www.gesmer.co
m/news/united-states-joins-the-berne-cop
yright-convention) on December 4, 2020.
Retrieved February 28, 2019.
16. 17 U.S.C. § 401(d) (https://www.law.corne
ll.edu/uscode/text/17/401#d)
(Evidentiary weight of notice)
17. "C1 Controls and Latin-1 Supplement |
Range: 0080–00FF" (https://www.unicod
e.org/charts/PDF/U0080.pdf) (PDF).
Unicode Consortium. 2021.
18. "Enclosed Alphanumerics | Range: 2460–
24FF" (https://www.unicode.org/charts/P
DF/U2460.pdf) (PDF). Unicode
Consortium. 2021.
19. U.S. Copyright Office, Compendium of
Copyright Office Practices, first ed. (http
s://copyright.gov/history/comp/compendi
um-one.pdf) (1967, rev. July 1, 1973), §
4.2.2
20. U.S. Copyright Office, Compendium of
Copyright Office Practices, second ed. (htt
ps://copyright.gov/history/comp/compen
dium-two.pdf) (1978, rev. 1984), §
1005.01(c)
21. U.S. Copyright Office, Compendium of
Copyright Office Practices, third ed. (http
s://www.copyright.gov/comp3/) (2014,
rev. September 29, 2017), § 2204.4(A)
22. Sartain, J. D. (February 3, 2020). "How to
get special characters using Alt key codes
or the Word Symbols library" (https://ww
w.pcworld.com/article/3046116/how-to-g
et-special-characters-using-alt-key-codes-
or-the-word-symbols-library.html) .
PCWorld. Retrieved February 13, 2020.
23. Haslam, Karen (August 8, 2018). "How to
copy and paste on Mac, plus 39 other
useful keyboard shortcuts" (https://www.
macworld.co.uk/how-to/mac/mac-keyboa
rd-shortcuts-3504584/) . Macworld UK.
Retrieved July 18, 2019.
24. "Enter special characters" (https://help.gn
ome.org/users/gnome-help/stable/tips-s
pecialchars.html.en) . help.gnome.org.
gnome.org. Retrieved July 18, 2019.
25. Jack Busch (April 20, 2018). "Type Special
Characters with a Chromebook (Accents,
Symbols, Em Dashes)" (https://www.groo
vypost.com/howto/type-special-character
s-chromebook-accents-symbols-em-dash
es) . groovypost.com. Retrieved
February 28, 2020.
26. Carey, Patrick (2008). New Perspectives
on HTML and XHTML, Brief (https://book
s.google.com/books?id=Tu_4hqdRlvQC&p
g=PA131) . Cengage Learning. p. 131.
ISBN 978-1-4239-2544-6.
27. Stephen Fishman (2010), "The Copyright
Symbol" (https://books.google.com/book
s?id=4WKTNLRtUAsC&pg=PA356) , The
Public Domain, p. 356, ISBN 978-1-4133-
1205-8
28. Hall, G. Brent (2008). Open Source
Approaches in Spatial Data Handling (http
s://archive.org/details/opensourceapproa
00hall_370) . Springer. p. 29 (https://archi
ve.org/details/opensourceapproa00hall_3
70/page/n41) . ISBN 978-3-540-74830-4.
Additional ISBN 978-3-540-74830-4. See
Open Source Approaches in Spatial Data
Handling (https://books.google.com/book
s?id=JZNuu8XODQMC) at Google Books,
page 29 (https://books.google.com/book
s?id=JZNuu8XODQMC&dq=copyleft+sym
bol+legal+meaning&pg=PA29) .
Retrieved from
"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?
title=Copyright_symbol&oldid=1195296097"

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