First, a copyright exists at the moment of creation. In other words, a work does not need to be published to have a copyright. The copyright does not need to be registered with the U.S. Copyright office. It is simply a right given to the person who created the work. The advantage of registering a copyright with the government is that you then have an official document proving your ownership, making it easier to win in court against someone who attempts to use your creation without your permission. Registration can be done any time after the work is created, but is required in order to initiate litigation. Winning a copyright infringement case in court, when the copyright is registered before the infringement took place or within 3 months of the publication of the work, can entitle you to get back your attorney fees as well as “statutory damages,” which essentially constitute financial punishment that is not based on the amount of money lost by the author due to the infringement. This is done to encourage people to register their copyrights and to deter people from stealing them.

As the owner of a copyright, you have the right to reproduce the work, enhance the work, distribute the work, and perform it or display it in public.

With software, the copyright gives protection to the source code and the binary code generated from the source code. In order to register a copyright, it is normally necessary to file a copy of the intellectual property being protected with the US Copyright Office as proof. Since most software contains valuable trade secrets (which we discuss in a later section) that would lose their value if presented to the public, the copyright office allows software source code to be submitted with major sections “redacted” or left out. In fact, only the first 25 and last 25 printed pages of source code need to be submitted, though there are no guidelines as to what constitutes “first” and “last” in something consisting of many independent files and a complex interconnect of routines.

Note that a copyright notice is not required in the code, except for registering the copyright.