Posted by Rentis Santroi on 2000-11-06
Or get a poor man's copyright. Get your source code sent back to you via Certified Mail. Certified Mail will give you a receipt dating when it was sent, received and signed for, and by who. Just sent it to yourself from a Post Office via Certified Mail, save the receipt and DO NOT open the mail until such time as you have to prove you own the software copyrights and/or intellectual property rights of your software. But, it is always prudent to have a notary public sign a document proving they have seen the source code on a certain date. Or even get them to stamp the source code itself. So get a notary to witness the source code's existance and then mail it with the notary's witness statement via certified mail to yourself. Oh, and it helps to have YOUR NAME somewhere on every few pages of each file in the source code. Try putting it in different places in each spot and sometimes use your name and other times use your initials. This is yet another way to prove it is your source code. Rentis Santroi Temporal Edge Half-Elven Coder ============================================ To err is human, to truly fuck something up requires technology. -----Original Message----- From: tcg@xxxx.xx.xx [mailto:tcg@xxxx.xx.xx]On Behalf Of kk Sent: Monday, November 06, 2000 5:46 AM To: rentis@xxxxxxxxxxxx.xxx Subject: Re: you want some discussion? > In short, what's the legal stuff I need to do before I release a screen saver? There is no "Official Copyright" for any software, there's just a implicit copyright for any creative product like art, music, poetry *and* software. So if it comes down to a lawsuit you have to prove you released the item in question *earlier* than your opponent. This can be achived in several ways. If you've got a distributor, you'll get e receipt for sending in your master copy, as well if you'll distribute it as shareware through, lets say, "tucows". But to be absolutley sure you should deposit the source code for the released version of any software with a notary, that will cost you a few bucks, but thats the way... kk -- Base your joy not upon the deeds of others -- -- for what is given can be taken away -- -- Martin http://www.mp3.com/kk99/ Double_K@xxx.xxx
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