Anne R. Allen's Blog... with Ruth Harris
Writing about writing. Mostly.
Can an author copyright a character like Harry Potter? by Joseph Perry, Intellectual Property Attorney Copyright law is complicated. Can You Copyright a Title? No. Under the US Copyright Act, you cannot copyright a title. That is because titles are too short to be protected. Copyright law protects original works fixed in a tangible medium […]
by Anne R. Allen Piracy has become big business in the age of e-publishing. If your intellectual property is available on the Web—in ebooks, blog posts or other web content—chances are pretty good you’re going to be pirated at some point. If you have a Google Alert on your name and book titles […]
by Anne R. Allen Should I pay to copyright my manuscript? Will a publisher or agent steal my plot from a query? How can I protect my ideas? We get asked these questions a lot. Until recently, our standard answer was: “Stop worrying about it. Your work is automatically copyrighted as soon as you type […]
This week the bookosphere saw something of a teapot-storm when a formerly indie author—now signed with a Big 5 publisher—got an odd notice from Amazon. It said her readers had been asked to delete their old versions of her book and get the new Big 5 version—at the author’s expense. It sounded like […]
