Page:The librarian's copyright companion, by James S. Heller, Paul Hellyer, Benjamin J. Keele, 2012.djvu/91

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Chapter Five. The Library Exemption (Section 108)
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Comment: This certainly looks and smells like a business, even though it operates out of a state-supported university. It is appropriate for FIT-DOC to pay royalties and belong to the CCC.

Notice of Copyright

5.2. Section 401(b)
Notice of Copyright

Notice Requirements

  • © or Copyright or COPR.
  • Date of first publication
  • Name of copyright owner
  • Stamp:

This Material Is Subject to the United States
Copyright Law; Further Reproduction in
Violation of That Law Is Prohibited.

The third and final requirement imposed by subsection (a) is the copyright notice requirement:

…the reproduction or distribution of the work includes a notice of copyright that appears on the copy or phonorecord that is reproduced under the provisions of this section, or includes a legend stating that the work may be protected by copyright if no such notice can be found on the copy or phonorecord that is reproduced under the provisions of this section.[1]

First, understand that you may not always be able to find a formal copyright notice. The United States joined the Berne Convention in 1989, and works first published on or after March 1 of that year do not need the notice to be copyrighted. If a work qualifies for protection, it is copyrighted when it is created, whether or not it has the formal notice.[2]

When you copy journal articles and the article itself includes a copyright notice, include it. If you are lucky, the copyright notice will appear on the first page of the article, either right after the author’s name or perhaps as a footnote. Unfortunately, many journal publishers do not include a


  1. 17 U.S.C. § 108(a)(3) (2006).
  2. 17 U.S.C. §§ 401–405 (2006).