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Workshop—Wednesday, March 18, 2009
7:00 p.m.-8:30 p.m., Light refreshments
Finnegan, Henderson, Farabow, Garrett & Dunner Law Firm
901 New York Avenue, N.W.
Washington, DC 20007
Wheelchair accessible
Metro: Red line—Gallery Place
THE BASICS OF COPYRIGHT FOR WRITERS: How to protect, publish, and license your written work and correctly incorporate other’s works.
Margaret Esquenet focuses on all aspects of copyright law and practice, including registration, counseling, licensing, enforcement, and litigation. Her practice includes counseling clients regarding DMCA compliance and website Terms of Use and Privacy Policy matters and advising clients regarding issues associated with rights of publicity and privacy, and related rights-clearance matters. She has worked on matters encompassing virtually all types of works of authorship, including paintings/drawings, fabric designs, sculptures, product labels, books, architectural drawings, source code, websites, online works, photographs, musical works, dramatic works, choreographic works, magazines, television shows, and motion pictures.
In addition to her copyright practice, Ms. Esquenet has a strong background in domestic and foreign trademark prosecution, client counseling, and trademark litigation and is experienced in trade secret matters, including counseling and litigation. She has participated in virtually all aspects of copyright, trademark, and trade secret litigation, in numerous district court litigations and subsequent appeals, often as second chair. She has also been actively involved in substantive and successful settlement negotiations, including mediation and arbitration proceedings.
Ms. Esquenet represents clients from a variety of fields, including consumer products, automotive, media, entertainment, software, telecommunications, and pharmaceuticals in connection with copyright, trademark, trade secret, and publicity/privacy matters. In addition to numerous non-litigation and pre-litigation matters, Ms. Esquenet has substantial experience in court. She successfully defended one of the country’s largest media companies against an accusation of copyright infringement; litigated one of the first copyright infringement cases dealing with open source software; and acted as second chair in the preparation and argument of a successful Ninth Circuit appeal upholding the district court’s grant of summary judgment in favor of a large automobile manufacturer in a trademark dispute.
Mary Beth Walker practices in the areas of trademark and unfair competition enforcement and litigation, trademark prosecution, and copyright registration. Ms. Walker’s practice includes all aspects of federal court litigation and opposition and cancellation proceedings before the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. She also advises clients on the enforcement of their trademarks and prosecutes U.S. trademark applications.
Both of the presenters are with Finnegan, Henderson, Farabow, Garrett & Dunner.
Click here for registration prices.
AIW Workshop Report: American Independent Writers and Washington Area Lawyers for the Arts Present “THE BASICS OF COPYRIGHT FOR WRITERS: How to protect, publish, and license your written work and correctly incorporate other’s works”
by AIW member Ramona Fortanbary
The scribes put down their pens and listened in Washington D.C. on March 18, 2009. The occasion was the AIW-sponsored workshop, “The Basics of Copyright for Writers.” A crowd of about 30 to 40 writers turned out for the event, which was held at the Washington law offices of Finnegan, Henderson, Farabow, Garrett & Dunner. Two of the firm’s attorneys, Margaret Esquenet and Mary Beth Walker, whose specialties include copyright law, copyright registration, unfair competition and trademark protection, were on hand to lead the workshop and engage in a lively question and answer period after the formal presentation ended. Both Esquenet and Walker are experienced litigators in the fields that matter most to writers and their supporters, such Washington Area Lawyers for the Arts (WALA).
The workshop dealt with all legal matters relating to copyright protection for writers. Copyight is enshrined in the U.S. Constitution. “Authors are specifically mentioned in the Constitution,” Esquenet said.
The most important piece of copyright, according to both attorneys, is simply to register all written works. Registration can now be done online at www.copyright.gov. Works can now be uploaded to the government site and writers can pay for their registration with a credit card. The process of registration is still timely, taking an average of 5 to 16 months. What you will need to register is the following: title of work; full name, birthday and address of author (s); year the work was created; the date and country where the work was first published. You will also need a deposit--essentially a substantially completed copy of the work. This registration is basically the only protection an author has to protect him or herself from the unauthorized use of their work. If a work is not registered, there would be no statutory damages under the law. The recommended format for registering a work is PDF and/or JPEG. “I recommend PDF or JPEG because they are not easily manipulated,” Esquenet said.
A second important point made at the workshop was compliance with the DMCA, or the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, which deals with online content. For an author who is a blogger or places other written material or photographs online, it is very important to register as an agent with the U.S. Copyright Office. It’s a very simple process. The site to register as an agent of the Internet is http://www.copyright.gov/onlinesp/.
Finally, a major part of the workshop was the ownership of written work. The attorneys said it is important to ensure full understanding of who owns the work prior to its being undertaken. In court cases where ownership rights have come up, the courts are looking closely at contracts, i.e. whether there was a contract between the parties or joint authors of a work.
“The courts look most closely at who mostly controls the process,” associate counsel Marybeth Walker said. “Contracts are real important because the court looks closely at them.” In other words, writers who have a writing partner or illustrator working with them should head off any problems by signing a contract specifying who owns what portion of the work.
Contracts are also important, Walker said, for freelancers. Closely read any work-for-hire contracts and determine whether you will or wish to retain rights to the hired work. Walker said that retaining some basics rights to the work is important to the writer. “You should at least retain rights to use the work for promotional/solicitation purposes.”
At the end of the workshop, a lively question and answer period followed until past 9 p.m., and then it was time to go for everyone. “I’m on the mommy track,” Esquenet said. “My three kids are wondering where I’m at.”