Copyright

I've got a team writing a Forum Application, and we were thinking about legal rights a few weeks ago, specifically copyright and who the copyright was in name of. I said I'd sort it out. We'd like it to be under a company name, but I do not know what that would involve. If need be it could be under my name, but we'd still need Copyrights to it.

I have no idea where to start, was hoping somebody had an idea?

Your first decision is one you have already stated, work out what name you want the work copyrighted under. A copyright does not have to be under a company name, it can be issued to anyone.

A copyright is also a free entity of its own-self, created when works have been published (made publicly viewable/useable etc). Anybody can apply a copyright to almost any work with a few exceptions like: ideas, facts, titles, names, short phrases, blank forms etc.

So, you now know you can copyright any expression of work/art etc you have created, and you know you can copyright it under any name you like. The next thing to do to make sure you are the copyright holder is to mail an original version of your work to yourself, this could be in a cd format for data etc. Mailing it to yourself gives proof that the works are your own simply by showing a registered time/date stamp. This is an official time/date mark. Additional protection may be secured by applying to your local patents office and mailing copies of your works to your lawyer. Another method of proving ownership in our country is getting a Justice of the Peace to formally acknowledge viewing the said work and signing/dating a statement verifying this.

Well that makes a lot of sense Will save us a lot of bother and expense making a company before we even release it.

Thanks!