Legal Question in Intellectual Property in New Jersey
Email as a Legal Proof
Can an email with an attached file, which shows a date and time,
legally establish that the sender had such file in thier possesiion at
such a date. In other words, If I send a my screenplay to myself and
later, need to show that I wrote said screenplay on a certain date,
can the email's date and time prove in court that I had the
screenplay on a certain date. Of course copyrighting a screenplay
is the best course of action, but in the time before getting it
copyrighted, I would like to know if the email is a legal element
which would stand up in court.
2 Answers from Attorneys
Re: Email as a Legal Proof
The e-mail evidence is simply that, evidence, and in general, no single piece of evidence is conclusive in a court dispute.
In particular with e-mail, the time and date logs on a personal computer can easily be altered to show any date and time of creation of the document (or of sending it by e-mail) that you want it to.
In addition to registering with the copyright office, which I believe currently costs on the order of $30.00 for the filing fee, you can also attempt to register your screeplay with the Writers' Guild of America.
However, even if you do all of the above, it simply will tend to establish the physical date on which the material was created.
Re: Email as a Legal Proof
Unlike US patent law that rewards the person who is first to invent a patent, copyright law protects original works of authorship. If you are the author of such a work and wish to protect the copyright, then you should put a copyright notice on all copies of your work such as Copyright 2004 John Doe � where the year is the year of publication of the work followed by the name of the author. If the work is unpublished then it should read Copyright 2004 John Doe (unpublished) � where the year is the year of creation of the work followed by the name of the author.
Copyright infringement is established by showing that someone had access to you work and copied it. Thus, it is more important to prove by say a Fed Ex tracking number whether the party one may believe copied a work actually had access to a copy.
As far as using email, it is a weak form of time stamping at best. You are no doubt aware of the many times emails have arrived with a bogus or late date. There are websites and other services out there that will time stamp your work and provide a third party verification of the date. But again for Copyright protection proving that you had a screen play before others got their screen play is not as important as proving that the others copied their screen play from yours.
Regards,
Don
Related Questions & Answers
Looking for something else?
10,200 active attorneys ready to answer your legal questions today.
Featured Attorneys
Earn additional revenue and grow your business.
