Copyright symbol

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This article is about the legal symbol. For other uses, see Copyright symbol (disambiguation).
Not to be confused with the symbol Ⓒ.

©
Copyright symbol

Punctuation
apostrophe ’ '
brackets [] () {} ⟨⟩
colon :
comma , ، 、
dash ‒ – — ―
ellipsis … ... ⋯ ᠁ ฯ
exclamation mark !
full stop, period .
guillemets ‹› «»
hyphen ‐
hyphen-minus -
question mark ?
quotation marks ‘’ “” '' ""
semicolon ;
slash, stroke, solidus / ⁄

Word dividers

interpunct ·
space

General typography
ampersand &
asterisk *
at sign @
backslash \
bullet •
caret ^
dagger †‡
degree °
ditto mark ”
inverted exclamation mark ¡
inverted question mark ¿
komejirushi, kome, reference
※
mark
number sign, pound, hash #
numero sign №
obelus ÷
multiplication sign ×
ordinal indicator ºª
percent, per mil %‰
plus and minus +−
equals sign =
basis point ‱
pilcrow ¶
prime ′ ″ ‴
section sign §
tilde ~
underscore, understrike _
vertical bar, pipe, broken bar | ‖ ¦

Intellectual property
copyright ©
sound-recording copyright ℗
registered trademark ®
service mark ℠
trademark ™

Currency
currency sign ¤

currency symbols
 ؋₳ ฿₿ ₵¢₡₢ $₫₯֏ ₠€ ƒ₣ ₲ ₴ ₭ ₺₾ ₼
ℳ₥ ₦ ₧₱₰£ 元圆圓‫﷼‬៛₽₹₨ ₪ ₿₸₮ ₩ ¥
円

Uncommon typography
asterism ⁂
fleuron, hedera ❧
index, fist ☞
interrobang ‽
irony punctuation ⸮
lozenge ◊
tie ⁀

Related


o Diacritics

o Logic symbols

 Whitespace characters

In other scripts

 Chinese
 Hebrew
 Japanese
 Korean

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 Portal

 Book

 v

 t

 e

The copyright symbol, or copyright sign, © (a circled capital letter C for copyright), is
the symbol used in copyright notices for works other than sound recordings (which are indicated with
the ℗ symbol). The use of the symbol is described in United States copyright law,[1] and,
internationally, by the Universal Copyright Convention.[2] The symbol is widely recognized, but under
the Berne Convention is no longer required to obtain a new copyright in most nations. For instance,
the United States eliminated the copyright symbol requirement as of March 1, 1989, but its presence
or absence is legally significant on works published previously.

Contents
 [hide]

 1History
 2U.S. copyright notice
 3Digital representation
 4Related symbols
 5See also
 6References
 7Further reading

History[edit]
Prior symbols indicating a work's copyright status are seen in Scottish almanacs of the 1670s; books
included a printed copy of the local coat-of-arms to indicate their authenticity.[3]
A copyright notice was first required in the U.S. by the Copyright Act of 1802.[4] It was lengthy:
"Entered according to act of Congress, in the year , by A. B., in the office of the Librarian of
Congress, at Washington." In general, this notice had to appear on the copyrighted work itself, but in
the case of a "work of the fine arts", such as a painting, it could instead be inscribed "on the face of
the substance on which [the work of art] shall be mounted".[5] The Copyright Act was amended in
1874 to allow a much shortened notice: "Copyright, 18 , by A. B."[6]
The copyright symbol © was introduced in the United States in section 18 of the Copyright Act of
1909,[7] and initially applied only to pictorial, graphic and sculptural works.[8] A 1954 amendment to
the law extended the use of the symbol to any published copyrighted work.[8][9]
The Copyright Act of 1909 was meant to be a complete rewrite and overhaul of existing copyright
law. As originally proposed in the draft of the bill, copyright protection required putting the word
"copyright" or a sanctioned abbreviation on the work of art itself. This included paintings, the
argument being that the frame was detachable. In conference sessions among copyright
stakeholders on the proposed bill, conducted in 1905 and 1906, representatives of artist
organizations objected to this requirement, wishing to put no more on the work itself than the artist's
name. As a compromise, the possibility was created to add a relatively unintrusive mark, the capital
letter C within a circle, to appear on the work itself next to the artist's name, indicating the existence
of a more elaborate copyright notice elsewhere that was still to be allowed to be placed on the
mounting.[10] Indeed, the version of the bill that was submitted to Congress in 1906, compiled by the
Copyright Commission under the direction of the Librarian of Congress, Herbert Putnam, contained
a provision that a special copyright symbol, the letter C inclosed within a circle, could be used
instead of the word "copyright" or the abbreviation "copr.", but only for a limited category of
copyrightable works, including works of art but not ordinary books or periodicals.[11] The formulation
of the 1909 Act was left unchanged when it was incorporated in 1946 as title 17 of the United States
Code; when that title was amended in 1954, the symbol © was allowed as an alternative to
"Copyright" or "Copr." in all copyright notices.[9]
In countries party to the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works, including
the modern-day U.S., a copyright notice is not required to be displayed in order for copyright to be
established; rather, the creation of the work automatically establishes copyright.[12]The United States
was one of the later accedents to Berne (1989); the majority of nations now belong to Berne, and
thus do not require copyright notices to obtain copyright.