How should copyright be notified when the owner isn&#39;t the one publishing the material and wants to be &quot;left out&quot;?
<p>CompanyIP owns a mobile app.</p>

<p>CompanyL is the exclusive licensor of the app and the company who enters into the agreement with Apple and the company whose name will appear in the App Store.</p>

<p>What should the copyright notice look like? I'm inclined to demphasize CompanyIP by going with something like</p>

<blockquote>
  <p>Copyright 2018. All rights reserved. Exclusive Licensor: CompanyL</p>
</blockquote>

<p>But maybe something more appropriate would be</p>

<blockquote>
  <p>Copyright 2018 CompanyIP. All rights reserved. Exclusive Licensor: CompanyL</p>
</blockquote>

<p>I don't think I can say</p>

<blockquote>
  <p>Copyright 2018 CompanyL. All rights reserved.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>or can I?</p>

<p>The answer is "not". A copyright notice, if present, must have the form <code>Copyright &lt;year&gt; &lt;owner&gt;</code>. Since you don't want that, the alternative is to omit the notice altogether. This does not invalidate the copyright.</p>

<p>The "All rights reserved" blurb dates back to the 1910 Buenos Aires copyright treaty, and stopped being useful in 2000 when Nicaragua dropped the requirement for including that phrase.</p>

copyright