Legal Question in Intellectual Property in Pennsylvania

Re: Copyright registration...

You need to complete the work to obtain (c) protection.

Go to www.uspto.gov and the US Copyright Office site for more info.

Re: Copyright registration...

Maybe you have a misconception about what copyright does. Under current law in the USA, as soon as you save to disk or print out any work of authorship, it is automatically protected by copyright. Thus, your outline is already protected by copyright. In the event that someone reads your outline and then expands upon it to create a "derivative work" it's likely that such a work would infringe the copyright in the outline. However, since you haven't yet written the book, the book, itself, is not yet protected by copyright.

Yes, it is generally desirable to REGISTER the copyright with the Copyright Office in Washington, DC, and the forms to do so are available on the Web. The only thing that would prevent you from registering the copyright of your book outline would be the government filing fee of $30. You would be registering it as an unpublished work, unless, of course, you choose to publish the outline itself, for example, on your website.

Also, be aware that copyright protects the EXPRESSION in a work of authorship, but not the IDEAS presented therein. The public is entitled to read a book and then talk about its ideas, provided that they don't appropriate the copyrighted expression.

Re: Copyright registration...

Dear Edmond: I would encourage you to copyright your book as soon as it is complete. However, be aware that Copyright may not protect some information such as methods, procedures, processes or concepts. You should visit the copyright website for more information. Good luck!