It differs upon which country you're in. This is for the USA though."The date. The copyright date is perhaps the most important trap for the unwary. One of the purposes of the copyright date, under U.S. copyright law, is to assist members of the public in identifying works which are so old that the copyrights have expired. To do this, a member of the public would take the copyright date appearing in the notice, add to it the number of years of the copyright term, and thereby arrive at a conclusion as to when the copyright would have expired. In the case of computer software, it is common place for the work to include original matter from many different dates including original work dating from any of several different years. Consider what would happen if the most recent year were the only year used in the notice. A member of the public would then be led to the conclusion that the entirety of the work is protected by copyright starting from that year and ending at the end of copyright term. But if part of the work dates from a previous year, then its term expires one year earlier than the rest of the work. This could mislead members of the public in the sense that they would incorrectly think that none of the work could be copied until the end of the term that is based on the date in the notice, when in fact part of the work would have entered the public domain one year earlier than the end of that term. There have been court cases where judges have stricken all of the copyright rights in a work due to such incorrect statements in the copyright notice."
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07-18-2008, 08:04 PM
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