What Is A Copyright?

Clients are often confused about the various forms of intellectual property, that is, patents, trademark, or copyrights. So, what is a copyright?

Simply put, a copyright is a type of personal property. It is created by statute and gives a person a right to their original creative work, a book, a song, something with original authorship. The thing to be copyrighted must be fixed in some tangible form that allows for it to be expressed to others. Paper, magnetic tape, canvas, or rock to name a few examples.

United States copyright laws are created by our federal government through the Copyright Act of 1976 (“Copyright Act”). The federal agency responsible for carrying out the copyright laws is the United States Copyright Office, a part of the library of congress.

A few examples of things that a creative person might want to get a copyright for are:

• books

• plays

• sculptures

• works of art

• music

• movies 

• software

• podcast recordings

A person that creates something original will be protected from unauthorized copying by others once a copyright is registered. So, the creative person would, with a copyright, have an exclusive property right in the creative work. They would have the right to do and to authorize others to remake, distribute, perform, display or copy the work.

Importantly, it is illegal for anyone to violate any of the rights provided to a creative person that is attained via the properly registered copyright. This right extends for a period of years that are determined by the Copyright Act. Too, like any form of personal property, a creative person’s copyright may be transferred – sold or left to someone in a will for instance.

Black and Female

Most folks understand that an employer musn’t discriminate against the employees because of, among other things, the employee’s race or sex. Clearly black people are protected from such discrimination. Likewise, women are protected.

The law though clouds that fact that employees have both a racial identity and a gender identity, and that many of them, black women in particular, may well face discrimination based on the fact that they are both black and women.

A black woman can be subjected to employment discrimination because she is black, because she is a woman. How about because she is a black woman. Indeed, this is very likely to occur, as membership in two protected classes places black women in a most disfavored employment position.

Take one early case which addressed discrimination against black woman for instance. The facts showed that the employer employed 346 people: 310 were white men and women, and 36 were black men. (Lea v. Cone Mills Corp., 301 F. Supp. 97, 2 Fair Empl. Prac. Cas. 12 (M.D. N.C. 1969).

Believe it or not, the personnel manager told applicants that the company simply "did not employ Negro females." The personnel manager added at trial that the company had never hired any black women. Essentially, the pattern created was that white men and white women were hired for desirable jobs, black men were hired for low-paying jobs, and black women were simply not hired at all.

Based on this reasoning, black women should be affected by both race discrimination and sex discrimination. As a result, they end up in a worse employment situation than either white women or black men. The statistics of one large employer bear this out.

After studying the wages of state employees for New York State, it was found that the wages of white women and of black and Latino men and women in jobs made up largely of people from these groups, were systematically depressed. The study further showed that the wages for black and Latino women were depressed further than those of either black and Latino men, or white women.

Year after year, these black and Latino women were being underpaid by approximately 14% of their salary due to discrimination based on what can only be race and sex.

Our attorneys understand that a client who is a black woman could face race discrimination, sex discrimination, or a combination of both. An attorney who sees these subtleties will better understand his clients' interests, and should be better able to protect those interests.