Excerpts from the “The Copyright Book: A Practical Guide

Fourth Edition by William S. Strong

The Subject Matter of Copyright

“Copyright law is essentially a system of property.  Like property in land, you can sell it, leave it to your heirs, donate it, or lease it under any sort of conditions; you can divide it into separate parts; you can protect it from almost every kind of trespass.  Also, like property in land, copyrights can be subjected to certain kinds of public use that are considered to be in the public interest. ”

“The province of copyright is communication.  It does not deal with machines or processes- those are governed by patent law- or with titles, slogans, and the other symbols that businesses use to distinguish themselves in the public eye, for that is the stuff of trademark law.  Works of art and literature are what copyright protects, no matter what the medium, and works whose purpose is to convey information or ideas.  In the words of the statute, it protects “original works of authorship fixed in any tangible medium of expression, now known or later developed, from which they can be perceived, reproduced, or otherwise communicated, either directly or with the aid of a machine or device.”

“This seemingly simply bit of language incorporates three of the fundamental concepts of the law, concepts whose meaning must be clearly grasped before all else: fixation, originality, and expression.”