What protections does Common Law copyright give me? What does Common Law copyright protection give me exactly? From my research, all I've found is that if I create a work, it is automatically protected by common law copyright, and that if I register the copyright, I get additional protections like the ability to sue in a federal court. So what protections do I get with Common Law copyright in the first place? Suing in a state court? Is the only right that it grants me, the right to use the copyright symbol, which deters others from copying my work? But if they actually copy my work, then I can't go after them?
There's no "common law copyright" in the US. There's common law trademark, but copyrights and trademarks are different things. All copyright is based on federal copyright statutes, and an unregistered copyright is just called an unregistered copyright. What an unregistered copyright gives you is almost the same thing as a registered copyright: the exclusive right to exercise various rights (reproduction, distribution, public performance/display, etc.) Registration is required before you can actually file an infringement lawsuit, but it's OK if you only registered it after learning about the infringement. The main reason to register the work early is that you might be able to collect higher damages if it was registered before the infringement. If the work was unregistered when the infringement happened, you can only collect actual damages. If it was already registered, you can instead opt to collect statutory damages. Statutory damages don't require you to show actual loss; instead, the court awards between $750 and $30,000 per work based on what it considers fair. The lower limit can go down to $200 if the infringer had no reason to think they were infringing, and the upper limit can go up to $150,000 if the infringement was willful. You can also collect attorney's fees if it was already registered. In the comments, the question was raised of whether someone else might be able to register the copyright for your work before you and what would happen then. When I say "registration is required before filing a lawsuit," the requirement is that you submit the registration paperwork properly, pay the fee, and wait for the Copyright Office to act on the application. If they accept the registration, you're all set. Even if they refuse, though, you can still file an infringement claim -- you just have to also serve the head of the Copyright Office, who has the option of jumping into the case to argue about whether the work could legally be registered. You can also sue the Copyright Office to get judicial review of a denial under the Administrative Procedure Act (refusal still lets you file infringement lawsuits, but you can't get statutory damages or attorney's fees against an infringer unless the Copyright Office actually accepted the registration).
Copyright exists whether they make that statement or not. Giving such notice informs the public that the work is copyrighted, who owns it, and when it was published. If the work is infringed, the defendant will not be able to use an innocent infringement defense. There's nothing special about using the domain name, as it's probably the name or DBA of the business that owns the domain.
Don't get hung up on unauthorized resale. That only prohibits unauthorized resale. Authorized resale is ok. From http://www.justice.gov/usam/criminal-resource-manual-1854-copyright-infringement-first-sale-doctrine: The first sale doctrine, codified at 17 U.S.C. § 109, provides that an individual who knowingly purchases a copy of a copyrighted work from the copyright holder receives the right to sell, display or otherwise dispose of that particular copy, notwithstanding the interests of the copyright owner. The right to distribute ends, however, once the owner has sold that particular copy. See 17 U.S.C. § 109(a) &amp; (c). Since the first sale doctrine never protects a defendant who makes unauthorized reproductions of a copyrighted work, the first sale doctrine cannot be a successful defense in cases that allege infringing reproduction.
You would be in poorly-tested waters under US law. The invented name &quot;Cthulhu&quot; as appearing in a novel is not protected by copyright. A collection of invented names and other words assembled into a dictionary (e.g. of Klingon) might be found to constitute a copyright-protected creative work. In Paramount Pictures v. Axanar Productions (complaint), plaintiffs partially base their claim on infringement of language; defendants sought to dismiss the suit on various grounds (&quot;questions of law&quot; rather than questions of fact), but the court denied defendant's motion for summary judgment. Subsequently, defendants settled the case. Constructed languages are highly creative expressive works whose elements are deliberately selected for an artistic purpose, and they are not naturally-occurring facts. The copyright office has no position on copyright protection of a constructed language, and any such position would have to come from so-far non-existent (definitive) case law. The dismissal in Paramount v. Axanar doesn't clearly indicate that a constructed language is protected. The primary legal question would be whether the database that you copy into your system is protected. There is a colorable legal argument that a collection of language-like objects. The statutory language in 17 USC 102 does not specifically preclude protection of a wholely-creative database, and the copyright office does not say whether a conlang can be protected because the courts have not ruled one way or the other. The situation in Feist is very different from the case of a work which invents a language from nothing.
A legal measure that can protect you is called a contract. See What is a contract and what is required for them to be valid? A formal contract will codify that you own the IP, they are working for hire, they are not to use or share the code with anyone else, etc., and will outline the penalties under international and Pakistani law. But good luck enforcing your copyright or suing for damages if they do take your code for their own. See Copyright law of Pakistan - Wikipedia.
Recipe books can be, and often are, protected by copyright. If the individual recipes are by others, this would constitute a collective work or compilation. See this recent answer for more on the rights protected for a collective work. The selection of which recipes to include would be a creative element, protected by copyright, and could not be copied or closely imitated without permission. However, division into groups by type of dish would be a &quot;natural and obvious&quot; arrangement, and not protected. So would alphabetical or chronological arrangement within a group, or over all. A &quot;non-obvious&quot; order of recipes would however be a protectable element. An individual recipe may be protected by copyright, but this protects less than one might think. Copyright does not protect facts or methods. This means that the list of ingredients is not protected, nor is the general list of steps of preparation. Only the exact wording of the recipe will be protected. Creating a new collection of recipes based on several different previously published collections of recipes (whether from the web, books, magazines, or other media) and making one's own selections of which ones to include that is significantly different from any of the previous collections would not violate the collection copyrights of any of the previous collections. If the actual recipes were rewritten so that any creative expression from the originals was not copied, then it seems that no copyright infringement has occurred. Most recipes, after all, are not fully original but are modified from older ones. There is no set figure for how many recipes could be copied from a given source before this becomes infringement. That would be, if a suit was field, a matter for the judgement of the count as to whether the new book was &quot;based on&quot; the alleged source. The more the list in the new work resembles a particular source, the more like a derivative work it seems and the more likely that it would be held to be an infringement. One could always ask for a license from the older source, to avoid any risk of suit, but it might not be available or the copyright holder might demand an excessive fee. Asking for a license risks drawing attention to the new work, as well, and might cause a holder to file suit who otherwise would not.
In the US at least, copyright does not normally protect titles and other short phrases, they are considered not original enough. (See the US Copyright office Circular #33). However, titles, brand names, and slogans may be protected as trademarks, as may logos. A trademark is a word, phrase or symbol used to identify goods or services to customers and others. They key issue in a trademark case is: &quot;might reasonable people be confused into falsely attributing the infringing item with the trademarked item, or into thinking that is is associate, endorsed, or sponsored by the makers of the trademarked item, or comes from the same source&quot;. When the name is the same and the general area and genre is similar, trademark protection seems plausible. Marvel is known to be quite protective of its IP, and might well have trademarked such a title. A successful suit by a trademark owner could lead to an injunction (a court order) against future use of the infringing m,ark, and significant money damages, depending on the detailed facts. A name such as &quot;Black Pirate&quot; is fairly generic, and might not receive much protection. On the other hand, if that name has become associated with a detailed and specific character or content, it might have acquired a &quot;secondary meaning&quot; and be more strongly protected. Consulting an experienced trademark lawyer or other expert might well be a very good idea.
This is a US-law answer. The Constitution protects various rights of individuals, and in general, there is no abrogation of your rights if you receive a benefit from government. Your presumption that taxpayers fully fund researchers and materials is incorrect, in the US, although there are some researchers whose salaries are entirely paid by taxes. So as a matter of basic law, a person is entitled to intellectual property that they create, regardless of how they interact with the taxing structure. US law has a concept of &quot;work for hire&quot;, whereby if I am hired by Podunk U to write a book, the book may be the property of Podunk U and not me the author. Usually, publicly supported institutions have policies that reign in the tendency of universities to lay claim to the research output of their faculty (but not staff) in terms of copyright, but not patents. In principle, a publicly supported university could hold that faculty are hired to write books and therefore any book that they write is a work for hire. This is not done for mostly political reasons. There are various employer-mandated obligations on university employees to make works &quot;open access&quot;, but it would take an act of Congress to make this a uniform legal requirement for, e.g., &quot;anyone working for a company who in some manner receives funding from the federal government&quot;. There is no such law in the US. Incidentally, this liberty extends to other domains, such as food, because all food is in some way touched by federal money. The explanation for why the law is what it is is entirely political, that in the US, the concept of private property is recognized and protected by law, and there is no law allowing the arbitrary taking of private property. The law can be changed (it may take some constitutional amendments). You could follow this up on Politics SE to ask, what would be the most-acceptable abrogation of property rights in the US which had the effect that &quot;if you receive direct or indirect tax support, you lose your property rights&quot; (probably too broad for SE, but that's the underlying political issue). If you want a model of what such a law might look like, you can start with the US law regarding patents and federal assistance. There are many specifics which would have to be re-written to get the situation where a person benefitting from government funding must turn over their copyright to government. First you would have to pin down what it means to benefit from taxpayer support. The usual way this is done is in terms of being a party to a funding contract between a government agency and an employer. This has no direct effect on authors (who 99.99% of the time do not contract with the government), so the law would also have to require parties to government funding contracts to impose contractual restrictions on any individuals vaguely receiving a benefit from such funding, so that those who benefit from a funding contract must assign copyright to the government. The set of people who benefit indirectly from grants is vastly larger than the set of people who receive dollar amounts from grants, so the law needs to be specific (do students who learn from teachers supported by a grant therefore themselves benefit from tax dollars). This is a major infringement on the property rights of individuals, so such a law would be challenged in court and subject to strict scrutiny. It is unlikely that the case can be made that turning over copyright to the government is a compelling government interest; however the interest is stated, it would have to be the least restrictive and most narrowly tailored means of accomplishing that end.