copyfraud

n.

A false or overly restrictive copyright notice, particularly one that claims ownership of public domain material.

Example Citations:

And yet, the White House is ignoring what that license says in claiming that the photograph "may not be manipulated in any way." That's clearly untrue under the law and a form of copyfraud, in that they are overclaiming rights.

—Mike Masnick, " President Obama Is Not Impressed With Your Right To Modify His Photos: http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20121120/03173221098/president-obama-is-not-impressed-with-your-right-to-modify-his-photos.shtml," TechDirt, November 20, 2012

NHTSA could easily excerpt the gist of bulletins as fair use. Or it could communicate facts in them without using any of the actual language or diagrams they contain. Anyone who has taken a week of copyright knows about the idea/expression or fact/expression dichotomy. But copyfraud obfuscates this obvious workaround.

—Frank Pasquale, " IP vs. Auto Safety: http://www.concurringopinions.com/archives/2011/04/ip-vs-auto-safety.html," Concurring Opinions, April 3, 2011

Earliest Citation:

Copyfraud is everywhere. False copyright notices appear on modern reprints of Shakespeare's plays, Beethoven's piano scores, greeting card versions of Monet's Water Lilies, and even the U.S. Constitution....These false copyright claims, which are often accompanied by threatened litigation for reproducing a work without the owner's permission, result in users seeking licenses and paying fees to reproduce works that are free for everyone to use.

—Jason Mazzone, " Copyfraud: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=787244," New York University Law Review, August 25, 2005

Notes: Related Words:

copyfighter

copyleft

copyright trap

IP theft

paracopyright

Categories:

Crime

Law and Order