ScholarWorks@UMass Boston

What CAN be Copyrighted?

Copyright is automatic!

Copyright is a form of legal protection that exists from the moment a work is fixed in a tangible medium.

This includes original items that might be: 

• Saved on a computer (like computer software or code, databases, websites)
• Audiovisual works (movies, animation, TV programs, video games)
• Pictorial or graphic works (painted on to a canvas, drawn on paper, carved into wood, photography, textiles)
• Literary works (research articles, prose, poetry, even something written on a napkin) 
• Sound recordings (music, spoken word, sounds, songs)
• Choreographic in nature (dances, pantomiming)
• Dramatic, theatrical or musical works (plays, musicals)
• Architectural works (buildings, models, blueprints, drawings)
• For more types of copyrightable works, view this Copyright Basics Circular from the U.S. Copyright Office.

Items that cannot be copyrighted:

• Facts, ideas, principles or discoveries

• Processes, procedures, methods and systems are not protected under copyright, but may be under U.S. patent law.

• Works in the Public Domain cannot hold copyright and are not protected.

The Copyright Act gives copyright holders a set of exclusive rights to:

• reproduce their work, in whole or in part,
• distribute copies of their work,
• publicly perform their work,
• publicly display their work, and
• prepare derivative works based on the original, such as translations or adaptations.

These exclusive rights, however, are subject to exceptions and limitations, such as fair use, which allow limited uses of copyrighted works without the permission of the copyright holder.  Please visit the other sections of this guide to learn more about fair use and other copyright issues.

• Copyright lasts for the life of the author plus 70 years.
• For corporations, the copyright term is 120 years from creation OR 95 years from publication.

This Creative Commons License grants you permission to copy, modify, adapt and reuse the content on this website (in part, or in its entirety) as long as you provide proper attribution to the original creator. This page is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Credit should be given to University of Massachusetts Boston's Healey Library, Department of Collections and Scholarly Communications. There's no need to ask for permission.