Every now and then, I see a post on one of the many blogs I read about a rip that’s been made of the author’s content or design. Protecting intellectual property is undoubtedly a concern for every designer, coder, musician, artist and writer… and thankfully, watching for and guarding against theft (at least online) gets a little easier all the time.

Understanding your rights, first of all, is essential to protecting them. Here are some terms you should get very cozy with, if you’re not already:

• Copyright – the right to copy, distribute, license, or utilize for profit a creative work. Creative works can include literature, music, or art (print and digital). Copyrighted works are protected for the life of the creator, and for an additional 50 years after death.
• Trademark – a label, name, symbol, distinctive mark or proprietary term used to distinguish oneself, company, or product from competitors.
• Intellectual Property – intangible property resulting from an original creative thought, such as a patent, trademark, or copyrighted material – ideas themselves cannot be copyrighted.
• Licensing – formal permission (usually with stipulations) to use, own, or do a specific thing
• Derivative Works – an alteration, mashup or modification of an original work, along with additions, which constitute a new, secondary work.
• Fair Use – this is very subjective, but basically it’s the terms under which a non-licensed citation of copyrighted material may be legally used, without paying royalties. (This is unique to the U.S.)
• Plagiarism – unauthorized use of language and/or thoughts of an author along with the misrepresentation of them as your original work.

Now that you’re armed with some basic info, the following resources can help you monitor, manage, and protect that content, theme or script which you worked so hard to create…

Monitoring Tools

Copyscape – a free content search service. Copyscape will scour the web for your copied (or quoted) content, based on the URL you enter. They also offer a premium service, a monitoring service, and some good solid information on plagiarism.

ArticleChecker.com – similar to Copyscape, this is a free plagiarism and dupe content checker. Enter your URL, upload a file, or copy/paste sample content into the text box and compare results from the top three SEs.

Google Alerts – is a fabulous tool used for a variety of reasons, and while you can’t use it to find duplicates of any lengthy content, it is useful for monitoring who’s talking about you, your site or your product.

Licensing Tools

Creative Commons – has gained a lot of popularity for authors, bloggers, themers and the like. There are several licensing options available. I chose CC for my own work simply because they present the things you need to know in terms you can understand without a law degree. Comprehensive legalese is only a click away, but unless you like to fall asleep on your keyboard, the basics are covered well enough.

GNU – has a long history, a variety of licenses to choose from, and about as much documentation as you can stomach in one day. Geared more toward software developers, GNU has reportedly been more aggressive than Creative Commons in enforcing licenses and managing violations. There are some concerns, however with the upcoming version 3 of the GPL and its incompatibility with version 2.

While there are notable differences between CC and GNU, with benefits and drawback for both, that’s beyond the scope of this article. To learn more, the Wordpress Podcast has an in depth show on copyrights, GPL and Creative Commons that you may want to check out.

Additional Resources

• Got 5 minutes? Tubetorial has a short and sweet video tutorial about Copyright as it applies to bloggers.
• Did you know you may be responsible for user comments (even though you don’t own them) just as with your own content? If you’re so inclined, ProBlogger has a good comment policy implemented, which may give you some ideas for one of your own.
• Aviva Directory has some excellent coverage of blogger law, and advice on how to keep yourself out of hot water too.
• If someone is foolish enough to plagiarize (or steal outright) your content, Lorelle on Wordpress has probably the most comprehensive article I’ve seen on what to do about it.
• Last but not least, the U.S. Copyright Office and U.S. Patent & Trademark Office are vast resources, offering a ton of info about copyright, how and why to register, licensing and policy, as well as trademark and patent search and tracking tools. Whew. Good luck with that. ;)