One thing every course creator needs to know about protecting methods and concepts
All right, this one's a doozy. This is the one thing that course creators need to understand about protecting their methods online. This comes up time and time again, because what is a course without your own secret sauce, your own personally created method for doing or learning XYZ? I'm gonna tell you the not so good news and then I'm going to tell you the good news.
The Bad News: Methods are not really protectable under copyright law.
That means the overarching concept of what you're teaching in your course, that's not really protectable. You can't register that concept with the copyright office. This might be something like:
Your secret method on how to create a meal plan for your family and 20 minutes a week
How to be more productive
How to do your own bookkeeping
Those types of things of how-tos? Those are general ideas.
The Good News: The way you express or you teach a concept is protectable.
Things such as:
Any presentation materials
worksheets or videos you create
The episodes you create on your private podcast
All of those moving pieces that make that concept, your own unique concept. Those are the things that are protected.
Bonus: How to actually protect your course content (and kind of protect your method)
When someone is signing up for your course, they should check a box to agree that they will not use the methods that they learn in your course in their own course. In other words, it restricts them from using what they have learned in a commercial setting and a setting where they can make money from it. That's contract law because they're agreeing when they sign up as either part of your terms of use, or as part of the signup process. So while it’s not really copyright law, it is contract law.