Learning Copyright

Oh, No!! He’s On That Soapbox Again…

Actually, I never get off of it. The only way writers make any money is understanding copyright and trademark and branding and if you don’t understand copyright and trademark and branding and constantly stay aware of it, you will make huge, huge mistakes.

So this week there was a copyright case spit out by the bought-and-paid-for Supreme Court of this country. It was flat weird. And no chance do I pretend to understand the procedure they used or even why.

But let me be so basic here and that my copyright expert friends are going to shake their heads. In essence, what the Supremes said, dealing with international copyright law, which damned if I know how they can do that, that when you get a rights reversion, it applies in all countries. Something about splitting the baby.

And how they said this leaves about fifty thousand cases open to go up to them and actually have them make some ruling on this that might pretend to be more standard than this mess.

Why is this even slightly important to all of you? Because in this wonderful new world we live it, territories do not exist and copyright protects your work around the world. Do you even know how??????, Or you just go ahead and toss your work onto D2D and flip all the tabs to get your story out to all over the world. Same with Amazon, Kobo, B&N, and so on, without having a clue how your work is copyright protected in those other countries.

So this very strange copyright case this week dealt with international agreements and conventions for one very strange part of our copyright law. In the years to come, it might or might not be impactful. But if you didn’t follow it or even try to understand it, you will never know. And honestly, that is just bad business.