On Mon, 20 Feb 2006, Keith Packard wrote:
>
> > + * Copyright (c) Junio C Hamano, 2006
>
> I've been told by at least two lawyers that the string '(c)' has no
> legal meaning in the US. If you want to indicate copyright, the only
> symbol which does carry legal weight is the c-in-a-circle mark '©'.
You should change lawyers, methinks.
The thing is, once the same line says "Copyright", the string '(c)' may be
meaningless, but more importantly, your lawyers are wasting your time with
pointless and mindless "punktknulleri" (literal meaning: "the f*cking of
points", aka being anal retentive).
Of course, they are probably also charging you for that time they are
wasting, which is why you should fire them and find somebody who tells you
anything relevant.
The FACT is that
(a) You can write out the word "copyright" in its entirety.
(b) the US legal system very much takes intent into account, so even if
you don't, if the meaning is clear, it's not like it matters. This
is even more true on most of the rest of the civilized world, btw (ie
Europe in general gives authors _more_ rights than the US, since they
recognize the notion of "moral rights")
(c) you own the copyright anyway ever since 1988, when the US ratified
the Berne convention. In fact, even before then, the US had adopted
the notion of automatic copyrights, and any work created after 1978
falls under this.
Anyway, for more details if you _really_ care, look up "Circular 3" by the
United States Copyright Office. The very first sentence of that paper
talks about how the notice isn't even required any more, but if you want
to talk to your punktknullande lawyers, point them to the section called
"form of notice". Which mentions the © letter, but makes it very very
clear that "Copyright" or the abbreviation "Copr." are totally
interchangeable in the US.
Now, in some _other_ countries, the © mark may be special, but quite
frankly, you won't really care. If it matters, those countries haven't
ratified the Berne convention, and you'll never ever in a million years
care about them. It's absolutely certainly not the case in any relevant
country.
Any country where "©" matters likely has many bigger problems wrt
copyrights, like not honoring them at all.
So: if you care about the copyright law in Ulan Bator, you may have to use
the © character. But the likelihood is that it's not an issue even there.
So tell your lawyers to f*ck the hell off.
Linus