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You most likely know what a copyright is, but if you don’t, according to the United States Copyright Office, a copyright is a set of rights granted by the Government for a limited time to protect creative or artistic forms or works including literary works, movies, musical works, sound recordings, paintings, photographs, software, and industrial designs.

But what is Copyleft?

While Copyleft is NOT an actual legal term, such as copyright, it is often referred to as a reciprocal license. With a Copyleft, instead of a copyright, restrictions are usually imposed on a work stating that when the work is copied, modified, or used in any subsequent work, the author of that subsequent work must grant the same Copyleft rights to the public for the subsequent work. It’s kind of like passing the rights forward.

Copyleft is usually symbolized with a backward C in the copyright symbol. Copyleft is often used for open source computer software, documents, music, and art. Copyleft is essentially the opposite of a copyright.

Where a copyright basically says ‘no, you may not use my work,’ a Copyleft says ‘yes, please use my work, but you must allow others to use the work that you create from my work as well.’

Just as there are copyright licenses on copyrighted work, there must be Copyleft licenses for Copyleft work as well. The most commonly accepted Copyleft license is the GNU General Public License, or as it is commonly known, the GPL which can be seen at:

http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html

So, if you find and wish to use work that is Copyleft, make sure that you understand that you must grant that same Copyleft privilege to the public as well. This is something that you must consider strongly before you create a product using Copyleft materials.

Be aware that you are not just giving others the right to sell your work that was derived from Copyleft material – you are granting them the right to alter the work as well!

Often, people who wish to use public domain work to create new products make the mistake of assuming that work is in the public domain simply because it is old. This is a mistake that is easily avoided simply by doing a small bit of research.

When you find work that you wish to use to create your own product, you need to pay close attention to the copyright date. This will tell you whether a work is possibly in the public domain, but not necessarily that it is actually in the public domain. Copyrights can be renewed – and if you are looking at the copyright date of an original publication, the new copyright may not be reflected.

After you determine that a work is eligible to be in the public domain, due to it’s copyright being dated the required elapsed time, you still need to contact the copyright office in that country to certify that the work is in fact in the public domain before you use it.

Most copyright offices will require a research fee. You can avoid this fee by going to the copyright office and doing your own research. You can search some databases online, without paying a fee. For instance, if you want to look for work that was copyrighted in the United States, you can go to the Copy Right Office website at http://www.copyright.gov and do a search in their online database.

Also, make sure that you compare the copyright date of the work that you are inquiring about with the copyright laws in the country where the copyright was obtained – not in the country where you reside. The copyright laws of each country affect everybody, including people who do not live in that country.

Remember that you should never assume anything. Always get certification that a work is in the public domain before you use it. You will save yourself a lot of time, not to mention a great deal of money and embarrassment!

When you are shopping for antiques, the older it is, the more valuable it usually is. However, when you are searching for public domain works, it isn’t necessarily how old it is that adds value to it. How difficult the work is to find or obtain adds value!

You’ve heard ‘if it was easy, everybody would be doing it.’ Well, the same applies to public domain works – if it was easy to find, everybody would have it, and it wouldn’t be worth much. For this reason, you should make it a point to seek out that which isn’t easily obtainable if you want to profit.

This doesn’t mean that you can’t profit from public domain works that are easy to find – it just means that you will profit more from that which is hard to find. Everybody knows that we all want and are willing to pay well for those things which we cannot easily get!

Think of original art pieces, such as the Mona Lisa. The Mona Lisa is in the public domain, and there are many, many copies of it. But the original Mona Lisa – the Mona Lisa that was painted in the 16th century by Leonardo da Vinci, on the canvas that he painted it on, with the oil paints that he painted with, has no monetary value assigned to it. It is priceless – but it resides in a room in the Louvre in Paris that cost 7.5 million dollars to build. People pay just to view the Mona Lisa – and many travel around the world to see it.

While the work that you find probably won’t require a 7.5 million dollar room of its own, you do want to seek out public domain works that either are worth something today, or can be made to be worth something. Depending on what you are hoping to accomplish, it may take quite a bit of research, time, and effort on your part – but it will be well worth it in the end!