Nothing needs to be registered, filed or paid for. Under Article 5(2) of the Berne Convention the enjoyment and exercise of copyright is not subject to any formality, in more than 180 countries. The moment you made the work in a recorded form, it was yours.
What you were not given is any way to show a third party that the work existed on the date you say. That is a separate problem, it is the one disputes turn on, and it is the only one worth paying to solve.
| What | What it gives you | Where it stops |
|---|---|---|
| The copyright itself | Ownership, automatically, from creation | You still have to establish the work existed when you say |
| Your name on the work | A presumption of authorship under section 104(2) | Rebuttable, and silent on the date |
| File dates on your computer | A date, of a kind | Set by your own machine and editable by anyone holding the file |
| Posting the work publicly | A public date, of publication rather than creation | The work is now public, which you may not want yet |
| A timestamped deposit | That this exact file existed on this date | Says nothing about who made it |
Read the last row before the others. A deposit answers the date and nothing else, and a page that told you it proved authorship would be telling you something the mechanism cannot do.
You cannot protect an idea. Article 9(2) of the TRIPS Agreement states it plainly: copyright protection extends to expressions, and not to ideas, procedures, methods of operation or mathematical concepts as such. The photograph is protected. The notion of photographing that subject is not. Anyone offering to protect your ideas is describing something copyright has never done.
There is nothing to register. The UK has no copyright register. Services selling registration are selling a record of your claim, which may be useful, but it is not the right and does not create the right. Understanding that before you pay for anything, including this, is worth a few minutes.
A client keeps using the work after the licence ends. A stock library receives a competing claim on your image. A platform takes your work down because somebody else asserted ownership first. In each case nobody is asking whether copyright exists. They are asking whose version came first, and they want something better than your word.
What most creators can offer is a file on their own machine. Its date was set by that machine, it can be altered by anyone holding the file, and the other side will say so. Posting the work to yourself in a sealed envelope has the same weakness in a different form: the postmark dates the envelope rather than the contents, and the package stayed in your possession throughout.
One thing does help, and it costs nothing. Under section 104(2) of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, where a name purporting to be that of the author appeared on copies of the work as published, or on the work when it was made, that person is presumed to be the author until the contrary is proved. Put your name on your work. It shifts the starting position, though it is rebuttable and says nothing about when.
What makes a date hold is that it came from somebody with no stake in the outcome and cannot be changed afterwards. The file is hashed with SHA-256 on your device, the hash is timestamped under RFC 3161 by an accredited trust service provider, and the timestamped hash is anchored to the Bitcoin blockchain. Only the hash travels, so the work is never published and never leaves your control.
Deposit the work as it develops rather than only when it is finished. Raw files, layers, drafts, the version that went to the client. One deposit establishes a moment. A sequence shows the work taking shape, which somebody who copied the result has no way of producing after the event. Where the work is a design rather than an image or a text, the rights involved differ and are set out on designs and fashion.
eIDAS qualification is an option on top. With it the timestamp carries the presumption under Article 41(2) that the date and time are accurate and the data intact, which shifts the burden onto whoever disputes it. The difference between that and a blockchain anchor alone is set out in blockchain timestamps compared with qualified timestamps.
Every certificate can be checked without us, using SHA-256, OpenSSL, the European Commission's trusted lists and any OpenTimestamps client. Our timestamp validator is open source and checks any provider's timestamp, not only ours, and independent verification sets out each check in full.
Most freelance disputes start at delivery, and delivery is where individuals keep the least evidence. Sharing from a vault records each recipient and each view against a timestamp, and access can be withdrawn when a job ends. Each recipient can be issued an individually watermarked copy, so a file that turns up where it should not identifies who received it. That turns a conversation about unlicensed reuse from an assertion into a record.
There is a separate page and separate plans for that, built around the volumes a working producer or songwriter generates and the situations the industry throws up, from sample disputes to sync licensing and ghost production. Start at music creators instead. If you record occasionally rather than professionally, the standard plans on this page will suit you better and the mechanism is identical.
See plans and pricing →No, and in the UK there is no register to use. Article 5(2) of the Berne Convention provides that the enjoyment and exercise of copyright shall not be subject to any formality, and more than 180 countries are party to it. Your copyright exists from the moment the work is created in a recorded form. Nobody has to be told, no fee is payable and no certificate is issued. Services that offer to register a copyright for you are selling a record of your claim, which is a different thing from the right itself and worth understanding before you pay for one.
Not by copyright. Article 9(2) of the TRIPS Agreement puts it directly: copyright protection extends to expressions, and not to ideas, procedures, methods of operation or mathematical concepts as such. The photograph is protected, the notion of photographing that subject is not. The manuscript is protected, the plot outline as a bare concept is much weaker ground. This matters because it is the single most common misunderstanding among individual creators, and because a service offering to protect your ideas is describing something copyright does not do.
Proving it, on a date, to somebody who disputes it. Owning a copyright and being able to establish it in a dispute are separate things, and the second is where individuals are weak. When a client reuses work beyond the licence, when a stock library receives a competing claim, when a platform takes down your work after somebody else asserts ownership, the question asked is when your version existed. The answer usually available is a file on your own computer, whose date can be changed by anyone with the file.
Yes, more than most people realise, and it is free. Section 104(2) of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 provides that where a name purporting to be that of the author appeared on copies of the work as published, or on the work when it was made, that person is presumed to be the author until the contrary is proved. So a credit line or a copyright notice shifts the starting position in your favour. What it does not do is establish when the work was made, and it is rebuttable, so somebody asserting an earlier version can still displace it.
It is weak, and it is weak for a reason worth understanding. The postmark dates the envelope, not the contents, and an unsealed or resealed envelope is a familiar objection. More to the point, the whole package remains in your possession throughout, so the other side argues you controlled it. The same objection applies to emailing a file to yourself. What makes a record hold is that the date came from somebody with no interest in the outcome and cannot be altered afterwards.
It gives you a certificate you can hand to somebody else. The certificate names the file, records its cryptographic fingerprint, and carries a timestamp issued by an accredited third party together with a blockchain anchor. Its value is that none of it depends on you: the person reading it does not have to believe anything you say, and can check every element themselves with free tools. Your work is not uploaded, published or disclosed at any point in the process.
No, and any service claiming it does is overstating the mechanism. A timestamp establishes that a specific file existed in a specific form at a specific time. It says nothing about who made it. Someone who took your photograph and deposited it would get a certificate too, showing only that they held the file on that date. What makes the record valuable is that you will have deposited earlier, and usually deposited the working files as well as the finished piece, which is a pattern a copier cannot reproduce after the fact.
The work as it develops, not only the finished piece. Raw files, layered files, drafts, sketches, the version sent to a client. A single deposit of the final image proves one moment. A sequence showing the work taking shape is far harder to argue with, because someone who copied the result has no equivalent history behind it. Deposit before the work goes anywhere: before it is delivered, published or posted.
Probably not. Music has its own page and its own plans, built for the volumes a working producer or songwriter generates and for the situations specific to the industry, such as sample disputes, sync licensing, ghost production and beat sales. If you are producing occasionally rather than professionally, the standard plans described here will suit you better, and the mechanism is identical either way.
This page gives general information about copyright and evidence. It is not legal advice. For a specific matter, consult a qualified lawyer in your jurisdiction.