At Jody Lynn Nye’s Writers’ 2-Day Intensive Workshop (Thursday at 2PM in Hyatt Kennesaw), intellectual property (IP) attorney and law professor Courtney Lytle Sarnow, compared herself to vampires. Once invited in, “you can’t make me stop.”

In spite of her warning, she packed highlights of copyright protection for writers into a mere hour. Sarnow dismissed any discussion of patents as limited to “sciency stuff,” but she touted aspects of trademark protection (identifying the source of goods or services) for series (but not book) titles. Mickey Mouse (as “Steamboat Willie”) might have been born a character, but became a trademark for Disney, she explained, adding that trademarks can be perpetual if protected. Trademarks are relevant for authors once they become “hugely, wildly successful.”

Sarnow went over the elements of copyrights and how they applied to authors’ oeuvres. Copyrights protect original works of authorship fixed in a tangible medium. For your creation to be protected, it must be original, created by you. Copyright only protects expression and does not protect facts. Ideas are not copyrightable. For fiction to be fixed in a tangible medium, it must be written (by hand or in a digital format).

Content produced by generative artificial intelligence (AI) cannot be protected because authorship is only created by humans. (AI is not human.)

She emphasized the benefits of copyright notices and protection from registering your stories, etc., with the federal copyright office maintained by the Library of Congress. Sarnow recommended doing your own copyright registration as an expensive DIY project. Nye joined her, however, in warning that editors and publishers don’t like authors copyrighting their work.

Sarnow referred her audience to https://www.copyright.gov for more information and copyright registration forms and instructions.