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About this tool
Build a correctly formed copyright notice for websites, software, print, video and sound recordings.
The Copyright Notice Generator assembles a copyright notice from the three elements the law names: the © symbol (or the word Copyright, or Copr.), the year of first publication, and the name of the copyright owner — the form set out in 17 U.S.C. §401(b). It outputs the notice as plain text, escaped HTML, an HTML meta tag and a source-file header comment, and adds the separate ℗ line that sound recordings take under §402. Copyright already exists from the moment a work is fixed, so the notice is about putting the world on record, not about creating the right.
Open Copyright Notice Generator on AltFTool — it loads instantly in your browser.
Type the Copyright owner and the Year of first publication, then choose "What is it going on?" — Website or app footer, Software / source code, Book or print publication, Sound recording / music release and five more.
Pick a Symbol style of © (symbol), Copyright (word), Copyright © (both) or Copr. (abbreviation), a Rights phrase such as All rights reserved or Licensed CC BY 4.0, and tick the year-range box if the work is still being updated.
Take the line you need from "Copy for each place it goes" — Plain text, HTML, HTML meta tag, Source-code header, and a Sound-recording line for ℗ media — each with its own Copy button; Reset restores the defaults.
Uses the three elements named in 17 U.S.C. §401(b) rather than an invented format.
Plain text, HTML with escaped entities, a meta tag and a source-code header from one entry.
Says plainly what 'All rights reserved' does, and why a notice is not a licence.
Three things: the symbol © (or the word Copyright, or Copr.), the year the work was first published, and the name of the copyright owner — for example © 2024 Northwind Studio. That is the form set out in 17 U.S.C. §401(b); anything else in the line is optional convention.
No. Under the Berne Convention copyright arises automatically when a work is fixed in a tangible form, and no notice, registration or fee is needed for protection in any member state. A notice is still worth adding because in the US it removes an infringer's innocent-infringement plea in mitigation of damages under 17 U.S.C. §401(d).
A range is a publishing convention for works updated continuously, not a legal requirement. The element the statute cares about is the year of first publication — the first number in the range — so an accurate single year is never wrong, and the end year should never be later than the current year.
Not legally. The phrase came from the 1910 Buenos Aires Convention, whose requirement is long obsolete, and it survives as convention rather than obligation. Note also that a notice is not a licence: without an explicit licence grant, the default position is that nobody may copy or redistribute the work. This is informational only — consult a lawyer about ownership questions.