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Rant: I mailed myself my own artwork 12 years ago thinking that was copyright proof, and last month a lawyer set me straight
So back in 2013 I read somewhere online that the poor man's copyright was a real thing. You stick your work in an envelope, mail it to yourself, and if it comes back sealed with a postmark, boom, you are protected. I did this with like 9 logo designs I made for a client in Sacramento who was always late paying and always sketchy about who made what. Fast forward to last month, that same client's new marketing guy starts using one of my old marks on their website with no credit and no license. I emailed him and he basically laughed at me. So I called a copyright attorney here in town for a 30 minute consult and she told me flat out that mailing stuff to yourself means nothing in court, not one bit. The date on a postmark does not prove you made the thing, and the envelope does not register anything. What actually works is filing with the US Copyright Office, which for a single logo runs about $45 to $65 depending on the form, or you can batch a whole collection. She also said the moment you put a design in a fixed form you already own the copyright, registering just gives you the ability to sue and get statutory damages. So now I am going back through old files registering the stuff that actually matters. Has anyone here done the group registration thing for a bunch of designs at once, and did your clients freak out when you mentioned it?
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