How do I Write a Copyright Policy?

by Kristie Lorette

As a small business owner, you may need to copyright written, audio or video materials that you use internally or externally in your business. When you copyright the works that your business produces, you protect these works from going into use by outside parties without your consent or knowledge. In essence, copyrighting these materials protects your ownership rights to the works. To introduce and maintain a copyright policy for your business, you may want to write a formal copyright policy so your employees know how to handle and use copyrighted materials.

Bring together the parties responsible for writing a copyrighting policy. Conduct a meeting where the owner(s) of the business, the company attorney and possibly the marketing manager of the business attend. This team should establish the need for the policy, what should be included in the policy, and which team member is responsible for writing, reviewing and implementing the policy.

Identify the copyright materials that need to be under the policy. The team should identify what materials the company owns fall under a copyrighting policy. These items may include rights to electronic materials, online and offline communications, videos, audio books, ebooks, print books.

Outline the primary sections of the policy. Start by drafting an outline of each of the primary sections to include in the policy statement. Sections can vary by the business and the type of items you’re copyrighting, but the outline typically includes the purpose for the policy, an overview of the policy, the use of copyrighted material for the business and the guidelines employees need to abide by when working with copyrighted materials.

Write the details of the outline. Following the outline, the person responsible for writing the policy should write a draft, whereby he is filling in the details under each section of the outline. For example, you may decide to have the marketing manager draft the policy.

Move the draft through the review process. After writing the first draft of the policy, have the other team members review the policy—making any additions, suggestions, deletions.

Write the final policy version. Once everyone on the team has provided their input, the person responsible for writing the policy should make any necessary changes and write the final version of the copyright policy statement.

Train employees on the new policy. Distribute the final copyright policy to all of the employees who work with the materials that fall under the policy. You may also want to conduct a meeting or training session to review the policy, answer any questions and make sure all of the employees understand.

Photo Credits

Suggest an Article Correction