The icon © is a familiar symbol, not unfamiliar to everyday internet users, often used in the copyright notice at the bottom of every website. A symbol is a symbol © of the term copyright – “copyright”, which is usually associated with a specific object (e.g. a book, website,…) with the meaning that the object has been protected by copyright. To find out more information about the logo © and its use, Vietnam Copyright is clearly stated in the article below.
1. Origin of the symbol ©
The symbol © first appeared in Section 18 of the U.S. Copyright Act of 1909. Initially, this symbol was used only for works of painting, graphics, and sculpture.
Before the advent of symbolism ©, people were conscious of copyright protection. People used symbols and other signs to assert the copyright or officialness of a work. Those symbols are used as a tool to restrict what a printer can publish, like a form of seal, indicating that a license has been granted and that the printed book is genuine. Symbols denoting the copyright status of the work were found in the Scottish almanac of the 1670s, books containing a print of the local coat of arms to confirm the book’s officialness. At the same time, people also use copyright notices to authenticate the work as original. However, it wasn’t until 1802 that copyright notices became mandatory under the Copyright Act of 1802 in the United States. The act requires publishers, if they want copyright protection, to include a copyright notice in their books, to publish a copyright notice on the title page or the page behind it. Initially, this copyright notice was quite long, specifically:
“Entered according to act of Congress, the _____ day of _____ 18 _____ (here insert the date when the same was deposited in the office) by A. B. of the State of _____ (here insert the author’s or proprietor’s name and the State in which he resides). ”
Later, the Copyright Act was amended in 1874 to allow the use of a shortened notice: “Copyright, 18__, by A. B.” However, the use of the above notice still causes a nuisance for works of painting, maps, graphics, and sculptures, therefore, by 1909, the symbol © was used to make it easy to show that the work was copyrighted and that it originally applied only to works of painting, graphics, and sculpture. By 1954, U.S. law had amended and allowed the logo © for any work to be published and copyrighted.
The symbol © is commonly used around the world through the provisions of the Universal Copyright Convention (UCC). Since the 50s of the twentieth century, the United States has been under the influence of copyright becoming an international issue. However, the United States was not a party to the Bern convention, the leading copyright treaty at the time. The Berne Convention requires all countries to eliminate procedures for copyright protection, including notice and registration, but the United States at the time was not ready to do this. The Global Copyright Convention, formed in 1952 and entered into force in 1955, retains the position of requiring copyright procedures (Clause 1 of Article 3 of the Convention), including a copyright notice bearing a symbol © with the name of the copyright owner and the year of its first publication, and the United States has acceded to that convention.
2. How is the symbol © used today?
Currently, the use of symbols © is hardly mandatory, except in countries with specific regulations. However, it is still advisable to use copyright symbols © and notices to provide further evidence in a dispute that the alleged infringer should have known that the work was copyrighted. Besides, since the United States acceded to the Bern Convention in 1989, works published in the United States before March 1, 1989, are still subject to the copyright notice that is mandatory.
In Vietnam, the use of logos © and copyright notices is not mandatory. Vietnam is a party to the Bern Convention and Vietnamese law does not provide for the use of any symbol or copyright notice as a condition for the work to be protected.
Above is the article “How is the © symbol understood?” of Copyright Vietnam. Hope this article brings useful information to readers.
