Orange County Copyright Lawyers and Trademark Attorney, Sebastian Gibson
Orange County Copyright Lawyer
If you’ve been searching for Orange County or San Diego copyright lawyers in Orange County or copyright attorneys in Orange County and haven’t found the copyright attorney in which you can be confident when retaining a lawyer for your copyright matters in Orange County, Sebastian Gibson is the copyright attorney you’ve been looking for.
With over thirty years of experience handling copyright matters, with law degrees in both California and in Great Britain, and years of international experience in London as well as decades of experience in California, San Diego and Orange County copyright lawyer Sebastian Gibson brings a wealth of experience to the table.
Sought out to be a writer for California’s two largest and most prestigious legal newspapers, Orange County copyright attorney Sebastian Gibson’s articles have been published in the Los Angeles Daily Journal and the San Francisco Daily Journal. Today over 17,000 people visit this website and his blogs monthly for useful advice and thousands more follow him on Twitter for his humor.
Orange County Copyright Lawyers provide a wealth of services to clients at the Law Firm of Sebastian Gibson. Copyright attorneys in Orange County protect the intellectual property copyrights of our clients with the expertise and knowledge of an Orange County copyright lawyer.
An Orange County copyright attorney from the law firm of Sebastian Gibson can provide protection to authors of literary, dramatic, musical, artistic, and other intellectual works, published and unpublished.
The 1976 Copyright Act law confers upon the owner of copyright, the exclusive right to reproduce it, prepare derivative works, distribute copies or phonorecords of it or display it publicly. The copyright attorneys from our Orange County law firm must advise that the copyright does not protect the subject matter of a writing, but only the form of expression, e.g., the written, recorded, displayed or performed description of the subject matter.
Copyrights are registered with the U.S. Copyright Office of the Library of Congress and through the Orange County Law Offices of copyright attorney Sebastian Gibson.
Copyrights can be obtained, with the expertise of Orange County copyright attorney and lawyer Sebastian Gibson by copyright registration of your book, manuscript, online work, pamphlet, poetry, report, test, automated database, computer program, text, pictorial, graphic or sculptural work, 2 and 3 dimensional works of fine, graphic and applied art, architectural work, musical work, dramatic work, script, pantomime, choreography, motion picture or other audiovisual work, music, drama, lecture, periodical, newspaper, magazine or mask work (related to integrated circuits on a semiconductor chip). Our law firm and the copyright attorneys and lawyers who work with us from other law firms as necessary, will review your work.
Copyrights are not, however, unlimited in scope. The doctrine of "fair use", as defined by the law and interpreted by the courts in California, limits the scope of copyright as do "compulsory licenses" under which certain limited uses of copyrighted works are permitted upon payment of specified royalties and compliance with statutory provisions.
Copyright Attorneys in Orange County
Copyright attorneys in Orange County and throughout California note that it is a common misconception that copyright protection begins upon registration. In fact, copyright begins as soon as the work is created. The copyrighted work immediately becomes the property of the author, whether or not the work is ever registered. Our Orange County copyright lawyers note that there is a limitation on this is in the case of works made for hire where the employer rather than the employee is considered to be the author.
Among the categories of material generally not eligible for copyright protection, as defined by the law and and noted by Copyright Attorney Sebastian Gibson are works that have not been fixed in a tangible form of expression, titles, names, short phrases, slogans, familiar symbols or designs, lettering, coloring, mere listings of ingredients or contents, ideas, procedures, methods, systems, processes, concepts, principles, discoveries or devices, or works consisting entirely of information that is common property and which contains no original authorship for copyright protection.
While generally the above categories may not be copyrighted, some categories may be eligible for trademark or patent protection. Our Orange County copyright lawyers can help define these parameters for you.
Although neither publication nor registration in the Copyright Office is required to secure copyright, there are definite advantages afforded with the help of copyright attorney and lawyers.
While publication is no longer as important as it once was, it still remains important to copyright owners. For instance, the year of publication may determine the duration of copyright protection of works made for hire. Orange County Copyright Attorney and Lawyer Sebastian Gibson cautions clients in Orange County that when a work is published, it should bear a notice of copyright to identify the year of publication and the name of the copyright owner to give notice to the public that the work is protected by copyright.
The use of a copyright notice is no longer required under California or U.S. law, but it still remains beneficial in the opinion of California attorney Sebastian Gibson And, because such a requirement was required under prior law, the use of notice is still relevant to determining the copyright status of older law.
While much information is available at the Library of Congress website, in perhaps no other area of law is Orange County copyright attorney Sebastian Gibson more useful than in an analysis of copyright ownership, than when one is considering the copyright status of older works. In the transfer of copyright of those older works, consulting CA copyright lawyers and attorneys can be paramount.
In order for any or all of a copyright owner's exclusive rights to be transferred, the transfer must be in writing and signed by the owner of those rights or by the owner's duly authorized agent or attorney. A copyright may also be conveyed by operation of law or bequeathed by will or pass as the personal property by the applicable state laws governing interstate succession.
The courts interpreting statutes and case law have stated that a copyright is a personal property right. Transfers of copyright may be recorded with the Copyright Office and afford certain legal advantages, and may be required to validate the transfer as against other third parties.
Formerly, the copyright in a work is reverted to the author if living, or if not living, to the author's specific beneficiaries, provided a renewal claim was registered in the 28th year of the original term of copyright. Orange County copyright attorneys and lawyers today point out that present law has dropped the renewal requirement except for works which were in their first term of statutory protection when the present law took effect.
Today, the current law permits termination of a grant of rights by following certain procedures and under certain conditions, after 35 years by serving notice on the transferee(s) within specified time limits. For works under statutory copyright protection before 1978, a similar right of termination is provided covering the newly added years that extended the former term of copyright from 56 years to 95 years.
Orange County copyright lawyer Sebastian Gibson can review the time limits for your work. Protection of a copyright by our California copyright firm and any copyright attorneys we utilize, assist a client against unauthorized use in a particular foreign country depend on the national laws of that country and the international copyright treaties and conventions to which they subscribe.
The advantages of copyright registration, through our Orange County California copyright attorneys and copyright lawyers elsewhere in the U.S. include, establishing a public record of the claim of copyright, the fact that registration is required before an infringement suit may be filed in court by our law firm's lawyers, the prima facie evidence it provides in court if made before or within five years of publication as to the validity of the copyright, the availability it affords to statutory damages and copyright attorney fees in a court of law, and the ability to record the registration with the U.S. Customs Service for protection against importation of infringing copies.
While applications for copyright are quite simple, a mistake made in the application can greatly affect a claimant's rights in a court of law, for instance, with regard to ownership of a work for hire. Consulting Orange County copyright attorney Sebastian Gibson for assistance for copyright matters can help you avoid these pitfalls.
If you are a writer or a publisher anywhere in Orange County, you will be interested in a recent case involving the Harry Potter author, J.K. Rowling. This is an important decision for writers, copyright attorneys, and literary lawyers everywhere that Copyright attorneys practice their profession.
In September 2008, a New York judge handed down a decision in favor of author J. K. Rowling and Warner Bros. who own the film rights in the Harry Potter books, in a literary and copyright law case involving a fan website that was planning on publishing a reference book on the Harry Potter saga.
What the ruling determined was that the reference book simply copied too much of the Rowling books to be considered fair use. The fact that what was copied was creative material as opposed to factual material, also hurt the website’s case as creative material enjoys a higher level of protection.
What the ruling does is to reiterate the rule that for a derivative book to enjoy the fair use protection under the law, it must be very transformative. It must create something else. Instead, the judge found that the reference book copied Rowling’s distinctive style and words in excess of what would otherwise be legitimate to create a reference guide.
The ruling does nothing to dilute the right of parody or literary criticism to be protected by the fair use doctrine. Rather, the ruling may elevate the importance of the "market impact" factor in the four part standard used by judges in evaluating fair use.
Those four factors are first, the purpose and character of the use (is the new work transformative into something different - in this case use of material from two companion reference books of Rowling made the website reference book less transformative). While another part of this factor is whether the use is commercial or noncommercial, most uses are for profit. Another part of this factor is whether the infringer acted in good faith or not.
The second factor is the amount and substantiality of the use, i.e. whether the amount of the use by the infringer is reasonable for the transformative purpose. Here, apparently, it was not.
The third factor is the nature of the copyrighted work, creative works being given much greater protection than factual works.
The fourth factor is the harm to the market of the original work by the infringing work. Here the court found that while the website reference book might not harm the market of the Harry Potter novels, it might very well harm the market of Rowling’s companion books.
Consequently, the New York judge issued a permanent injunction against publication of the website reference guide. The decision may be appealed and it is possible if the website reference book were edited, it might pass muster. But in this copyright lawyer’s opinion, the success of an appeal or an edited book to pass muster as being fair use is unlikely under these circumstances.
While this information barely scratches the surface of copyright law, as does the information contained at the Library of Congress website, copyright attorneys, such as Orange County copyright lawyer Sebastian Gibson should be consulted for proper analysis of a person's copyrights, when possible, in the application process and, of course, with respect to any litigation. If you're looking for copyright attorneys in Orange County, we hope you'll call our office so we can begin protecting your valuable works today.
Orange County Copyright Attorney, Sebastian Gibson
One of the best copyright attorneys for people in Orange County to follow for his humor and wit, one of the funniest Orange County copyright lawyers and one of the top humorous Orange County copyright attorneys people follow on Twitter, Orange County copyright attorney Sebastian Gibson has been called "brilliant," "hilariously funny" and a "legend."
It matters more than you think who you call for your copyright and other legal matter. When it matters most, call Orange County copyright lawyer Sebastian Gibson. When it’s time to hire a Orange County copyright attorney, hire a legend.
