The copyright symbol, or copyright sign, designated by ©, is the symbol used in copyright notices
for works other than sound recordings. The use of the symbol is described in United States
copyright law, and, internationally, by the Universal Copyright Convention. The C stands
for copyright.
History A copyright notice was first required in the
U.S. by the Copyright Act of 1802. 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". The Copyright
Act was amended in 1874 to allow a much shortened notice: "Copyright, 18 , by
A. B." The copyright symbol © was introduced in
the United States Copyright Act of 1909, section 18.
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. 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. 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. 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. 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.
US copyright notice
In the United States, the copyright notice consists of:
the © symbol, or the word "Copyright" or abbreviation "Copr.";
the year of first publication of the copyrighted work; and
an identification of the owner of the copyright, either by name, abbreviation, or other designation
by which it is generally known. e.g.
© 2011 John Smith The notice was once required in order to receive
copyright protection in the United States, but in countries respecting the Berne convention
this is no longer the case. The United States joined the Berne Convention in 1989.
Digital representation Because the © symbol has long been unavailable
on typewriters and ASCII-based computer systems, it has been common to approximate this symbol
with the characters. The character is mapped in Unicode as U+00A9
© copyright sign. Unicode also has U+24B8 Ⓒ circled latin capital letter c and U+24D2
ⓒ circled latin small letter c. They are sometimes used as a substitute copyright symbol
where the actual copyright symbol is not available in the font or in the character set, for example,
in some Korean code pages. On Windows it may be entered by holding the
Alt while typing the numbers 0 1 6 9 on the numeric keypad. It can be entered on a Mac
by holding the Option key and then pressing the "g" key. On Linux, it can be obtained
with the O C ComposeKey sequence. Related symbols
The sound recording copyright symbol is the symbol ℗, and is used to designate copyright
in a sound recording. The copyleft symbol is a backwards capital
letter C in a circle. Because it is unavailable on Unicode, it can be approximated with an
open O character between parentheses or, if supported by the application, by combining
it with the character U+20DD ⃝ combining enclosing circle ↄ⃝. It has no legal meaning.
The registered trademark symbol is the symbol ®, and is used in some jurisdictions to designate
a trademark that has been registered in an official office of record.
The non-obligatory symbol used in a mask work protection notice is Ⓜ.
ⓗ, circled Latin small letter h symbol, is sometimes used in Welsh language contexts
instead of © to represent the word hawlfraint 'copyright', for example, here.
See also Copyright
Copyleft Enclosed C
Enclosed alphanumerics References
External links How to make copyright symbol on WindowsLinux/iPhone