What Year to Put On Your Website Copyright Notice
It's a new year, and here's a question I get asked a lot. And that question is, "What year should I put on my website copyright notice?" You know, that little copyright notice at the bottom of your website that says "copyright, blah, blah, blah?" Well, I'm going to give you the answer in this short post. And if you read through to the end, I will give you the ONE exception for changing this general rule.
What's in a copyright notice and why it's important
So you've heard me say this before, but a copyright notice has three elements:
The copyright symbol or the word copyright;
The year that the creative work was published; and
The owner.
A copyright notice is not a requirement for copyright protection (at least, not any more). But, if you don't have one, an infringer could claim innocent infringement. And that's a big deal, because it could drastically reduce the amount of money that they pay you for infringement, if it gets to that level.
What year to put at the bottom of your site
When was your website published? Well, if you're constantly adding content to your website, by adding blog posts, by adding videos, then you have content on your website that could span a couple of years. So, what year should you put on your website copyright notice? A lot of times you will see a date range. So my website, for example, was first published in 2015. But I've added blog posts and videos for years and years since then. So if you scroll down to the bottom of this very page, you will see a date range at the end of my copyright notice.
The important exception to this rule
Now, the exception to this is: if you're not adding new content to your website, or you haven't added new content to your website since it was published. So if you have a brand new website that you've never added content to before, yeah, you would only have the one year: the year that the website was published. Otherwise, you are welcome to use that date range on your website from the date on which the website was originally published through the last date that you updated the content on your website.
One more thing...
All of this assumes that you actually own your website. Gotta look back at your contract with anyone that worked on your website to make sure. And if there wasn't a contract, get your hands on my IP Rights Agreement Contract Kit™, stat!
