- Southside Legal
By Brian Scott
Copyright lawyers deal with many different subjects such as Internet law, intellectual property, patents and trademarks, and of course, your copyright laws. Each lawyer has attended school for some time to get a degree to help you, which means they know more about the law than you do.
Some mistakes website owners make is when they buy articles online; many times a buyer assumes they have full copyright. This isn’t always the case, depending on the agreement of ownership. To make sure you don’t fall into this trap, you should have a lawyer create a contract before you hand over any money; this way you know for sure if you have full ownership or if the writer does. You have three different categories you may purchase an article: usage, full, and unique. A copyright lawyer will explain exactly what each one means. Usage means the buyer gets to use the article one time, but the writer can use it again or resell it. Full rights will give the buyer all rights; they can even place their name on the article, saying they wrote it.
A copyright lawyer will never tell you that you don’t have to register your copyright; in fact they will encourage you to do it. Sure, they get money to do it for you, but you will have documented proof of your copyright ownership. If you don’t file it, you can’t sue if someone uses your information. (To learn more about copyrighting your work, download my free ebook, “Copyright Basics,” at www.ResearchCopyright.com).
A copyright lawyer is not cheap. Most copyright lawyers will have special discounts on packages, which mean you can get a lot more than what you originally walked in for. Usually your lawyer will even advise you of things you didn’t even have knowledge about.
A copyright lawyer can help you better understand the laws of the virtual world, as well as the real world. Every day someone new is getting sued over content on the Internet. It can be as simple as someone stealing an article, quote, song or a picture. A big issue is using another company’s name in your tags to get the search engines to rank you higher. Other issues may be with bloggers today. Be careful with what you say about your places of business; not only could you get in trouble for any copyrighting issues but slander is another big issue.
Many people only look for a copyright lawyer when they want to copyright something or sue someone, but they normally don’t think about hiring a copyright lawyer when they are being sued. This is definitely the person you want on the job defending you if the time comes. Before you hire a copyright lawyer, if you have any other questions call them up and ask them. Lawyers love to give advice, especially if they think you’ll be hiring them.
Copyright Lawyers in the U.S.
A US copyright lawyer can help anyone in the United States, as they know U.S. copyright laws and the best ways to fight them. A US Copyright Lawyer protects you. A US copyright lawyer files a copyright, advises you and helps you get back what was once yours, and sue someone. If you are an American or someone currently living in the United States, you will be able to hire a US copyright lawyer; however, if you reside out of the States, you may have restrictions.
In the Internet world copyright issues are becoming a big thing and having a US Copyright lawyer behind you can help if you need to fight against someone stealing your work. Copyright lawyers must stay current in recent rulings dealing with copyright issues, which mean they know their job. Don’t just stick with a lawyer you already had because you’ve used them before. They may have been great at your car accident or your divorce, but for copyright issues, you need a lawyer who deals with copyright laws. A US copyright attorney can also help you to retrieve money, even if you never filed the copyright until after it was stolen or online. This can get a bit tricky to prove, however if you have a good lawyer, this shouldn’t be a problem.
A US copyright lawyer can help you copyright your work; it costs $20 to file a paper to get the copyright on your work. This does not mean there is a one time fee of $20 and all your work is safe. Y must do this with all your work. You are paying per piece. In the future if you need to sue someone for using your content, the violators can end up paying $35,000. A US copyright lawyer can help you with this if you live in the United States.
Your US copyright lawyer may have dealt with people stealing content, or maybe celebrity pictures. Recently a big name celebrity had her pictures leaked on the Internet. She sued the people who were spreading them, and it suddenly stopped. All those websites that had the pictures on them were asked politely to take them down since they were copyrighted. That’s what a good US copyright lawyer will do; he/she will be able to prove their case because they know the law. They will have to show proof of when something was taken, said, or documented. In the case of pictures, she was able to show she had the proofs and she had no agreement for anyone to use them.
Copyright laws have been changing since 1976; however, copyright laws change as our technology advances. Lawyers and judges know our needs and are learning every day how to protect them and in order to do that laws are passed and the copyright laws are updated. Granted laws may be different in other countries but the chances are if it happens on US soil, the best representative would be a US copyright lawyer because they have been studying ever since law school.
About the Author: Brian Scott is a freelance journalist who covers copyright law for ResearchCopyright.com.
Source: isnare.com
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