Relevant Documents and Links

Contacting the Copyright and Trademark Offices

Publications by Gary Marshall

The following publications may be viewed online (using Adobe Acrobat or Adobe Acrobat Reader) and may be downloaded and printed for your personal use. You may also share them among your friends and colleagues, provided that you do not charge for them, and you share the entire document without making any modifications, changes or deletions. Commercial use is not permitted without the express permission of the author.

Publications for Artists

Copyright Basics (pdf file): A brief overview of Copyright law - the basic form of legal protection for most artistic works, including maximizing protection for your works, copying someone's else's works, recent changes in copyright law and the impact of the Internet.

Dangerous Talk: Speech and the Law (pdf file): A basic overview of speech law, including the ongoing battle between the constitutional protections of First Amendment Free Speech and Freedom of the Press versus restrictions on criminal and obscene speech, personal liability for harmful effects of speech, defamation (libel and slander), and rights of privacy and publicity, and how this balance is changing in the past September 11th world.

Publication and other Literary Contracts (pdf file): An overview of publication contracts and agent agreements, including what to ask for and what to look out for. Also covers the basics of simple contracts you should be writing in the course of the ordinary day-to-day business of being a writer.