Copyright Permissions and How to Secure Them by Lee Wilson Copyright owners are given a monopoly on the use of their works to encourage them to create. Under the United States copyright statute, the creator of a copyrighted work has the exclusive right to: • copy or reproduce the work • prepare alternate or “derivative” …

If you ever use photographs of private individuals in any project, getting written releases should be a routine part of your business that you never neglect. This is true even—or perhaps especially—if you are a cottage-industry, spare-bedroom entrepreneur. If you use the name or even a recognizable description of a living individual in any literary …

    ECONOMIC ISSUES   What’s at Stake in the Google Library Suits   by Lee Wilson   Google’s announcement that it planned to let users search books from libraries throughout the world was not met with joy in the publishing industry. In fact, it gave rise to lawsuits from the Authors Guild and the …

Private individuals have privacy rights, and, to a lesser extent, so do celebrities. In most circumstances, however, only celebrities have the right of publicity. That’s because they are generally the only people with the sort of name recognition that makes their identity valuable in the marketplace.   The right of publicity differs from the better-known …

As the recent furor over Google’s digitization project indicates, the application of the law regarding “fair use” of copyrights depends greatly on the specific facts in any situation. In fact, two situations that are identical except for one circumstance may lead to opposite results, with one amounting to fair use of a copyrighted work while …

Lawyer Lee Wilson has written several books on intellectual-property law, including The Copyright Guide: A Friendly Guide to Protecting and Profiting from Copyrights, and Fair Use, Free Use, and Use By Permission: How to Handle Copyrights in All Media, both published by Allworth Press. She lives and works in Nashville. Although copyright law does not …