Copyright protects creative expression that has been fixed into a tangible medium—written down, recorded, photographed, or coded. It does not protect ideas, facts, or concepts. The moment you write something original, you own the copyright automatically. No registration required for ownership to exist.

Copyright traces back to Queen Anne of England in the early 1700s. The idea was straightforward: give artists and creators an exclusive right to control copies of their work for a period of time so they can benefit financially. After that period expires, the work enters the public domain for everyone to use.

Multiple Copyrights in a Single Work

A single product can contain multiple layers of copyright owned by different people. Take a music album: the album cover art is one copyright, the written composition of each song is another, and the sound recording is yet another. A photograph on the cover might belong to a different artist than the one who wrote the music. Each layer has its own owner and its own protections.

Why This Matters for Your Business

Nearly every business has copyrightable assets—website content, marketing materials, software code, photographs, training documents. Understanding that copyright exists automatically upon creation helps you recognize what you already own and what you need to protect through proper contracts and, where valuable, registration.

Video Transcript

Common Types of Intellectual Property

The idea of intellectual property can sound overwhelming. Patents, trademarks, copyrights. And how can we possibly cover what takes multiple semesters in law school in just a few short minutes here? Well, here’s how we’re going to cover just what you really need to know. How do you spot the issues? We’re not gonna walk you through everything an attorney needs to do, but we’re gonna talk about how do you protect one of your most important assets, intellectual property, what’s a copyright, what’s a trademark?

Why Every Business Owner Should Pay Attention

And more important, how can you, as a business owner. Understand enough to make sure you are protecting these important aspects, these important assets in your company. Every company has trademarks and copyrights associated with it, or at least nearly every company, but a lot of business owners don’t know that.

Main Intellectual Property Categories

And so today we’re going to unlock the ideas of trademark. Copyright. We’ll touch on patent a little bit. We’re also gonna identify what are the items in your business that can be protected.

What You’ll Gain from This Session

When we’re done with this short time, you will walk away having identified what can you protect in your business by copyright. Trademark and patent, and you’ll have a plan of action on how to go about getting that protection if you even need to. A lot of times you have protection built in, and I’m gonna talk about the protections available to you for free.

First, let’s talk about copyright. I think you’ll find once you understand the purpose for copyright, it will all make sense. It will go from feeling like a bunch of legal terms to ah, I get it. You’ll have an epiphany that will help you see copyright all around you.

Historical Origins

In 1665, queen Ann was born. She was the monarch over Great Britain and Ireland. She did something that will forever change intellectual property law. Queen Anne only lived 49 years, but at the ripe old age of 45 in 1710, she enacted.

The Statute of Anne

The statute of Anne. This was the first statute that established copyright law. Basically, the law said those who are artists who create art have a right to control their art. They have a right to control if it’s copied, if it’s used, and what that looks like. We’re going to call that copyright, the right to control copies and subsequent use of your art.

Inclusion in the U.S. Constitution

So the idea behind copyright is to protect the rights of artists. Did you know that the copyright idea was. Included in the United States Constitution by our founding fathers because they wanted to make sure that this important intellectual property right was established in the founding document for our country.

Constitutional Wording

I’ll read it to you. It says, to promote the progress of science and useful arts by securing for limited times. To authors and inventors, the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries. Now, the reference to inventors and discoveries, that’s patent law. We’ll cover that later. But for now, we’re talking about artists.

So. When an artist creates something, they automatically get a copyright to it. That means they automatically get a right to control the copies.

Examples of Protected Works

So let’s talk about what kind of works could an artist create that would be protected? It’s any art, and that’s very broadly considered. Let’s take a look at some examples.

Album Art and Photography

Here we have an album for a record player. Let’s take a look at this. We have an album cover. Is that cover protected by copyright? Certainly, I. What about the photo that was taken of these individuals? Is that protected by copyright? Yes. Photos are protected. The cover is protected. The music is protected.

All of that was created by artists, perhaps different artists, and that means there are different copyrights associated with each one of those works of art. The photo, the design. The music. And by the way, even with music, you have the written composure of the music and you have the recording of the music.

Composers and Recording Artists

So there are two different aspects of art that are fixed into a tangible medium. In other words, you have the composure, you have the recording, both of those, which could be by different artists. Are protected by copyright.

If you’d like to know more about how to avoid trouble like this. I have a free resource at AaronHall.com/free. I provide information for business owners of small to midsize companies on how to avoid common legal problems. That includes A PDF. It includes videos, talking about important issues. I’m Aaron Hall. I’m an attorney for business owners and entrepreneurial companies If you’d like. Subscribe to this channel so you can get more educational content like this.