Dear Rich

Although registration is not mandatory, it is strongly recommended. Anyone who owns all or part of the rights that make up a work’s copyright may register that work.

I have used these fonts extensively for my consulting work to produce reports, many of which are available as PDFs (with font embedded) online. I recently read that I may need to pay for the rights to these fonts.

I recently changed career paths and am now studying graphic art and am wondering if I could publish and sell the book as opposed to just keeping it for personal use.

I found a website that uses my photograph at the top of their main page and their “About” page, without permission or credit. I registered the image with the Copyright Office long ago. What language should I use when I first email the firm?

Rich Stim answers copyright questions from a website owner and a writer, and songwriting credit question from a musician who uses a pseudonym.

Rich Stim explains basic copyright law for a designer who created a newsletter for a client, and an artist creating greeting cards using iron work designs.

This can be confusing. For example, copyright for the 1961 public domain film One-Eyed Jacks was not renewed, but the film’s score was renewed in 1989.

You don’t always get paid just because someone creates a book or movie based on your life story.

What makes fair use such a slippery concept is that it can only be proven by going to court, and most people can’t afford to take the issue that far.

If a book deal is in the works, and you feel you are entitled to a cut of the earnings, you should seek to become a party to the publishing contract.

How do you get your music into the hands of music supervisors, those gatekeepers who decide whose music is heard during an episode of “Justified”?

if you’re trying to protect something functional (like the massaging book bag pictured above), seek a utility patent.

Here is some background on how these intellectual property decisions are made by doll companies.

“Good ideas are common — what’s uncommon are people who’ll work hard enough to bring them about.”

Any work first published in the U.S. before 1923 is in the public domain regardless of the lifespan of the author or authors.

You can copyright a combination of images and text, even if the text by itself is not copyrightable.