The copyright in your work automatically belongs to you as soon as it is written down. Unlike trademarks, you do not lose or weaken your copyright if you fail to defend it.

It used to last for 50 years, but now, under EC law, it lasts for 70 years after the end of the calendar year of the author’s death. 

You do not generally have copyright in anything you write as part of your employment. For instance, if you are employed to write tv scripts, or if you are a journalist, your employer will claim copyright in everything you write. The National Union of Journalists in the UK strongly urges its members to fight to retain copyright in their work. In practice, this can be difficult. 

There is no copyright in ideas. You can try to get anyone to whom you are submitting an idea to sign a document to the effect that they will not use it or pass it on to anyone else. In practice it is really difficult to get anyone to sign, except for commercial or technical non-disclosure agreements which normally have a short time limit.  

Piracy costs authors vast amounts of money in lost royalties. The Writer’s Handbook reckons that the loss of income in Russia, China and various small nations is depriving British publishers and their authors of £200 million a year. 

Photocopying is claimed by the same source to be responsible for around 300 billion pages of illegally reproduced material. In the UK the Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society has set up agreements which ensure that authors do get income from photocopying. 

There is no copyright in titles, although you may well be sued for ‘passing off’ if you decide to call your book Gone with the Wind or even The Wind Done Gone.

Moral rights cover the right of paternity (entitling authors to be credited as the creator of their work) and integrity (which means that your work cannot be savaged without your agreement.) 

Put a copyright notice on your manuscript. It should say Copyright (year) by (name or owner). (On many PCs, you can get the copyright symbol, ©, when you hold down the Control key, Alt key and press the letter c.) 

Under the Berne Copyright Convention, if you can show you created the work you automatically have copyright. The phrase 'All rights reserved' is not longer required.

You could post a copy of your manuscript to yourself and keep this, unopened. If there is ever any dispute, the postmark will prove that you wrote the manuscript by a certain date. 

Store a copy of the work with your solicitor or bank, using a dated receipt to prove when you wrote it. 

Check your contract carefully to make sure that you are not inadvertently giving away your copyright. Once you have done this, it will be lost for good.

The Library of Congress, Copyright Office, Register of Copyrights, 101 Independence Avenue, S.E., Washington, D.C. 20559-6000 maintains a copyright library and a fee of $30 is payable for each deposit.

If your book is published in the UK or Ireland make sure you make the legal deposits required.

You cannot assume anything is in the public domain unless there is an explicit notice to that effect.

If you are tempted to donate something to the public domain remember that someone could then change a few words and claim the copyright.

If something is in the public domain, it can even be used by others for commercial purposes.

Reserve your rights even if you are willing to let people copy and distribute your work.

Fair use is an exemption to copyright law. You can quote from copyrighted works for the purpose of review, research, education, news and even parody or commentary without permission.

Damage to the commercial interest of the copyright holder is the likely test if the use is judged to be fair or not.

Your intent in using the copyright material will be important. Context will be vital.