Copyrighting Ideas

[Ma_Jie]

Hi. I'm wondering if anyone here might know how to go about copyrighting ideas. Like, I have an idea for a Grad School Thesis, and to my knowledge no Western Sinologist has yet written on this idea, so it seems at least somewhat viable; and that being the case, and also that I'm not yet in Grad School, I want to protect it.

If I wrote a short paper outlining the main points of my theory and got that copyrighted, would that be sufficient to protect it? Do any of you guys have experience with copyingrighting papers?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated,

Thanks,

Ma Jie

[hech54]

An old musicians trick was to mail it to yourself. Fold it like a brochure and the dated postmark served as proof that this idea was yours at the time.

[adam]

The answer to your question largely depends on what country you want to gain a copyright in. Your Location says China (soon), so I can't speak too much of Chinese Copyright law, but generally, you cannot copyright an idea. This should be a fairly universal concept under any country's copyright law. A copyright can only be held in an expression of an idea, fixed in a tangible medium. If you were to jot down the main points of your idea, you could copyright those specific points, as written, and nothing else. And this would not prevent someone from making their own expression of that idea, even based on your writings, they just couldn't copy your actual written document in substance.

When it comes to copyrights, countries either use a registration system or a publication system. Under a registration system you typically gain copyright in your work merely be reducing it to tangible medium (e.g. writing it down) but that copyright cannot be legally enforced through litigation until you register it with the Country's Copyright Office.

Publication systems require that you actually publish the document with notice of a claimed copyright (some countries you just put a (C) or the equivalent of "all rights reserved")

You need to look into your Country's copyright system. The Copyright Office most likely maintains a website that will tell you the procedure for gaining a copyright. If you are looking to tie up an idea for future use, you can't. If you are looking to protect your particular expression of an idea you can do this via a copyright.

[Ma_Jie]

Thanks Adam. I actually live in Canada at the moment.

Thank you for the advice. I will look into Intellectual Property and other such laws this week since I have time.

Thanks again,

Ma Jie

EDIT: Adam, you are on point: I cannot protect my idea; it must be written, published or otherwise — I just read the Canadian Copyright Act.

[Ma_Jie]

Something interesting. This comes from the CIPO* web site regarding copyright infringement:

"[For example,] borrowing a musical tape from a friend to copy onto a blank tape for private use (a royalty payment to the owner of the song rights has been paid when the blank tape was purchased)"

This icould very well be pertient to the Canadian members of this forum.

Cheers,

MJ

CIPO stands for the "Canadian Intellectual Property Office."

[vitualis]

As per others.

You cannot copyright an idea. You can copyright a piece of created text/music/art/etc... However, somebody else can write about the IDEA in your thesis. He or she only can't COPY it without your permission.

If you have an invention you could apply for a patent but it doesn't sound like this is the case.

Regards.