Do you use reference photos or illustrations when creating your work? Do you incorporate other’s work into your own?

Then make sure you tune into this week’s episode where I share how to let the U.S. Copyright Office know this when you fill out your copyright registration application.

Watch the video | Read the show notes | Read the transcript

Show notes

• How do you know if something is in the public domain or still covered by copyright? Read this post.
• What is and isn’t protected by copyright? Learn here.

Transcript

Do you remember the Cabbage Patch? What about the Running Man? Why am I practicing my 90s dance moves?!?

Because today we’re talking about the U.S. Copyright registration application system. And believe me, it’s stuck in the 90s.

In particular, we’re gonna talk about one page of the application. And that’s the Limitations of Claims or the Exclusions page.

This week’s question comes to us from Ashley in California. Ashley asks,

If I reference photos or illustrations, how do I fill out my copyright registration application?

Great question Ashley.

Hi, I’m Kiff, founder of the artist’s J.D., a place designed to add ease to the legalese of running your creative business.

There are only four times when you’re gonna have to use this page of the application. The majority of the time you just get a skip right over this page.

The first two instances have to do with when you use someone else’s work. Either that it’s owned by someone else and still protected by copyright. Or that it’s in the public domain.

The second two instances have to do with when you’ve incorporated your own work. And that’s when you’ve incorporated something that you’ve previously published or you’ve previously registered the copyright in.

Now so far all I’ve done is say a bunch of legal mumbo-jumbo that probably doesn’t make a lot of sense.

So what I’m going to do is go through three examples of how this might work.

Obama Hope Poster

So the first example I want to talk about is a poster I know you’re familiar with. And that’s the Obama Hope poster.

Now there are tons of things that could have been handled better from copyright perspective when it comes to this poster. But today we’re just going to talk about if Shepard Fairey had come to me and said, “Hey, will you register this copyright?” How I would have filled out the application.

So on that exclusion side, I would say the things that aren’t owned by my client is “some owned by another”. And what I would put on that included side, is that my client had created artwork.

Unboxing Experience Card

What’s another example?

Another example that might apply to some of you, if you are a product-based business, you’ve probably got some sort of inset card that you put in your packaging that your customers see as part of their unboxing experience.

On this inset card, for example, you’ve got a stock photo that’s a mockup. That you’ve put your artwork on to so that they can see what your t-shirts look like. You’ve got photographs that are your own product photography. And you’ve created text. And together these three things make up your inset card.

So how would I fill if the copyright registration application for this? On the excluded side, I would check the photography box. Because that stock photo that you’ve inserted your artwork onto is owned by someone else. And it’s fully incorporated. It’s just not the inspiration behind like we did with Shepard Fairey. So that’s why we put the photograph there. And on that included side, you will have your artwork to cover the illustration that appears on the t-shirt. We’ll have photography to cover your product photography. And we’ll type in the other box “text” to cover the text that you’ve written for the card.

So that’s how we would handle that one.

Mural

The final example I want to give you is when we might not need to fill out this page. Even though we’ve looked at other people’s work to create our final products. When we might get a skip this page.

Here my example has to do with painting a mural.

In this mural maybe you’re painting this beautiful forest scene with lots of different animals in it. You’re coming up with the whole concept for it. And as you’re painting you say, “Hmmm…What does a panda look like again? Do I have the proportions right? It’s looking a little funny.”

So you go to Google images and you type in panda. And you look at a whole bunch of panda photos. And you say “Okay, that’s where I’m getting the proportions wrong. This is what I need to do to make the panda look like a panda.”

In that instance, you wouldn’t need to check that you looked at photographs, some owned by another, because you’re just referring to things that don’t have any copyright protection.

You are referring to how it a panda appears in nature. And so there you can skip that.

If instead, you took some very unique features from that photograph. Maybe the pandas were playing in a certain way. Maybe there is some very distinctive buildings or other things in the background that you incorporated into your mural.

There we would do it much more like the Shepard Fairey example. Where you would say you’re excluding “some owned by another” because we’ve heavily referred to those photographs. And you would include the artwork that you came up with to paint the mural.

So I hope these three examples help you better understand when you will and won’t use that page on the application.

Great question Ashley.

Next week we’re going to keep the momentum of your business going up. Because when you pick a name you don’t want to have to go back to ground zero and pick a whole new name for your business. So how can you make sure if either you’re just starting out or you’re going through a rebranding process that you pick the name that you’re not going to get in legal hot water for. Tune in next week to get my answer to how you’re going to make sure that happens.