Which ones? Well if you are reading this article you already know one of the most prominent ones. If you ask any professional working on digital marketing what is the most valuable online asset for a business, you’ll get pretty the same answer. Content. And what are the top 3 the most valuable professionals? Writers/Copywriters will certainly be an answer. 

For writers and copywriters this is their opportunity to negotiate the terms of the work in all aspects, giving them the chance to achieve the thing many of us always wanted. Self employment, financial independence, flexible working hours and work from anywhere is at the reach of their hands. And this is how we see the online freelancing professional blooming.  Such freedom though, comes with certain responsibilities, skills and knowledge that a freelance writer should acquire to be successful. For that preparation and self- education is fundamental. 

The most important element of a freelance writer’s job is to write original articles that the readers will find interesting enough to read. The second one is to get ownership of their copyright, know their rights under the copyright laws and how to protect them. 

What is original work? 

According to the copyright laws, a work that has required significant mental activity to create, and is, therefore, considered original, automatically becomes its creator’s intellectual property. 

Recent studies reveal that there are over 5 billion blogs and 7 million blog posts are published every day! Such a thing leaves you wondering, are we honestly creating so much original content on a daily basis? Obviously no. 

Every writer is aware of the practises out there to plagiarize or citate content from other authors, either because they’ve done it, or because they have seen it done to them, or both. Both practises though can be copyright infringement cases, meaning you are not producing an original work, thus not entitled to copyright over it. 

To make sure you are creating a work entitled to copyright, you need to make sure your article is not infringing on someone else copyright, and that you have actually created an original work. To do that, remember two things

1. You should be mindful of how to use someone else’s work. If you just change a few sentences and don’t give credits to the author, you are plagiarising. 
2. In case you use work from another author, the best practise is to add a citation. Now if you use too many citations in your work, it’s not original anymore.   

To be certain that you are creating original work, use other authors’ work for inspiration and spend more time to work the outline of your piece to express your point of view. That’s the reason why you became a writer in the first place right?

What is copyright?

Otherwise known as “author’s right,” copyright is a legal term used to describe the rights that creators have over their intellectual property. Copyright means “the right to copy,” therefore, only the creator – or people permitted by the creator – have the right to reproduce the work.

As a creator of original work, you are awarded copyright automatically when you produce a work that is in a tangible form (i.e. blog post, article, social post, etc.). However, registering your copyright gives you additional legal protection. This is because you may need to provide proof of ownership (or strong evidence of it) in a court of law when someone uses, copies, or distributes your work without permission.

And now what?

At this point, you have created your original work, got proof of ownership for it and now as the rightful owner you are ready to go secure a sale for it. This point is critical for you as you need to understand the rights you have over your work to negotiate a beneficial deal for you. Read carefully the contracts passed to you by your collaborators or self publishing services or even social media and DO NOT give away the ownership of your copyright. 

Work for Hire

When signing a work for hire contract you are passing all the ownership of your copyright to the person who hired you. This practically means that you can no longer make any decisions or negotiate deals and income for your work. This is the reason why most of the people interested in your work would like you to do, so they can benefit from your work as rightful owners. And this is exactly why you should avoid it. 

First & Secondary serials rights

To unlock the benefits of passive income first and secondary serials rights are two terms that you should familiarize yourself with. 

As the owner of the work when closing a deal, you should make sure that you’ve only just agreed on the right to publish, and have not sold your rights to your article or piece.

To put it simply, this means that your collaborator has paid for the right to publish your original work for the first time in a specific location. 

And at this point, you are able to unlock the passive income deriving from your secondary serial rights. As the rightful owner,  you can modify, adapt or alter in any way you see fit in order to re-sell and publish your article or piece generating income from your original work. 

To sum up, to live the dream of self employment and financial freedom, you have to educate yourself on the copyright laws and the rights you have as a creator of original work.  Be very careful on the terms of your agreement to make sure you are not passing your rights over to someone else, as you will be passing over all rights to generate income from it too. 

This week’s post looks at three well-known copyright infringement cases involving tech giants battling each other over ownership rights.

Apple vs. Microsoft

The battle between these two tech giants began with a simple question: “Who invented the graphical user interface (GUI)?” That’s because the company that controlled the interface of the next major operating system would be the one to set the standards for application software. Unsurprisingly, Apple tried to stop Windows from becoming a major operating system.

Although Microsoft helped develop Macintosh, Jean-Louis Gassée, who had taken over from Steve Jobs at the time, refused to allow Microsoft to use Apple’s software. Bill Gates pressed on nonetheless, deciding to add in features of his own.

When Gassée saw the software, he was enraged but didn’t want a lawsuit, so he ended up agreeing to license the interface. However, Windows 2.0 turned out to be almost identical, and Gassée believed this to be a breach of contract. You see, Apple had only allowed its software to be used on Windows 1.0 – and not future versions.

So, without warning, Apple filed a lawsuit against Microsoft in 1988. This lawsuit contained 189 visual displays that infringed copyrights. This led to a six-year legal battle, culminating in 1989, with the court ruling that 179 of the 189 disputed displays were covered by the existing license, and the remaining 10 did not violate Apple’s copyright. 

This was due to what is called the doctrine of merger – where the idea and the expression of the idea are separate. The same idea can be expressed in countless ways. 

The court ultimately ruled in Microsoft’s favour on August 24, 1993.

Case: Apple vs. Google

Apple is no stranger to court proceedings, especially against Google. Steve Jobs repeatedly called  Android a “stolen product” that he was “willing to go thermonuclear war” over.

Things got so heated between Apple and Google that former Google CEO (and current chairman) Eric Schmidt stepped down from his position on Apple’s Board of Directors.

When Apple sued Samsung in 2010, Google had to step in and help Samsung partly due to a ‘Mobile Application Distribution Agreement’ that gave “partial or full indemnity with regard to four patents.”

At the same time, Motorola sued Apple, accusing the tech giant of infringing several patents, including how cellphones operated on a 3G network. On the other hand, Apple claimed that Motorola violated its patent to certain smartphone features.

The copyright case was dismissed in 2012, on the grounds of insufficient evidence, when Google acquired Motorola. 

So far, frustrated judges have thrown out the Apple vs Motorola case three times, telling them to solve their problems between themselves.

Apple didn’t’ attack Google directly, but instead went after companies selling Android devices. Yet, the search giant has always been very intent on defending Android.

In 2014, Apple and Google released a joint statement saying that it had agreed to settle all patent litigation with Apple and would even “work together in some areas of patent reform.”

Case Apple vs. Samsung:

The Supreme Court presided over a few major technology cases in 2019, but in one of the most important ones, it reversed a ruling that found Samsung liable to pay its profit from the entire line of Galaxy phones in 2011. 

The devices were found to infringe on Apple’s design patents that cover the front of the phones, and the arrangement of icons on the home screen. 

In this case, Justice Sonia Sotomayor noted that owners of design patents won’t always be entitled to the total profits from the infringing product. For example, the device has different components, so the award may be limited to specific infringing features. 

Chief Justice Roberts argued that “the design is applied to the exterior case of the phone” – and not “all the chips and wires.” Therefore profits shouldn’t be awarded based the phone’s full price.

Apple in turn argued that design is central to many products and therefore a patent violator should hand over the full profits from infringing designs. Samsung, on the other hand, argued that penalties should be proportionate to the importance of the infringing features to the actual product. 

The Supreme Court decided that things are not so clear-cut, as a liability in design patent cases doesn’t necessarily have to be “all-or-nothing.” Therefore, Apple and Samsung will have to go back to court to figure out what the appropriate amount of damages should be.

In today’s digital world, with the advent of the internet, and even worse, with the existence of all the social media platforms, the battle seems to be lost. Social media platforms offer access to a huge amount of information and allow the connection among millions of internet users who share their creations in a way that was never before possible. 

But what about intellectual property rights? 

Many people believe that the best way  to protect your intellectual property in social media, is not to put it there at all. Nevertheless, we all use social media, and every day more and more people share with the rest of the world everything they create, such as photos, videos and music, without taking time or effort to read each platform’s terms of use. 

A quick look in those terms shows that no platform owns what has been posted on their site. The copyright still belongs to the owner. But when we come to the license of use, things change. 

Let’s take a look at some of the most popular social media platforms and their copyright terms of use. 

Facebook:

The Facebook terms of use state that once you share, post or upload your creation, of which you own the intellectual property rights, you retain those rights. You grant though the host the ability to use, modify, copy, distribute to others, or even create derivative works of it, without giving you any royalties or credits. When you delete your content from the platform, this license stops existing.  

Twitter:

Twitter’s terms of use are quite similar to those of Facebook. You still hold the copyright of your creation, but by posting it on the platform, you give Twitter the license to use, copy, modify, and make it available to the rest of the world and with retweet let others do the same. This content can be used in any other media or distribution channels now known or later developed, without any compensation paid to you.

Tiktok: 

In Tiktok’s terms of use, things are even “stricter”. You still own the copyright of what you create, but here you submit the “unconditional irrevocable, non-exclusive, royalty-free, fully transferable, perpetual worldwide” license to use, download, modify, share, publish and distribute, not only to Tiktok but to other users and third parties as well. This is different from other social media platforms which state that users either upload their own original content or content that they have permission to use.

Moreover you grant the free license to use your username, image, voice to identify you as the source of any of your User Content

Pinterest: 

In Pinterest you can upload and share photos from your website or business and thus promote your work. 

In Pinterest’s terms of use is stated that the copyright of those photos remains to you, but as an exchange you grant Pinterest the license to use, store, save, reproduce and distribute your content for free, without paying something back to you.

If you think that someone infringes upon your intellectual rights in any way, Pinterst gives you the opportunity to submit a DMCA notice by filling out a copyright complaint form. 

It is more than clear that by posting on social media, you still keep the copyright of your creation. Nothing changes with it. 

The key word is the word “licence” which you give up for a variety of purposes depending on the platform you use. In some platforms you even grant the host the ability to keep a copy of your post and use it even if you delete it. 

So, before posting anything on any platform, spend some time reading its terms of use, and then decide whether to use it or not.