It used to be that you had to include a copyright notice under copyright law, but that changed a number of years ago. The notice isn’t required for copyright to still take effect, but I’ll agree that it’s helpful to include it for people who might not know any better.

For people who are not in the know within this area they may not realise something they are looking at is actually protected and might feel that they are allowed to copy the work but having this kind of notice will put them off. Legally adding it or not may or may not give an additional layer of protection but I think that having it there is better than not if you are wanting to protect your work.

Putting myself on the other side of the fence in the shoes of someone who is looking to steal someones work, I would be more more inclined to steal the work of someone who has not included a notice on their work than someone who has. This is just because really it makes me think that the person who has the notice would be more serious about pursuing me should the infringement come to light.

The intent behind a copyright notice is to give other people notice that the content on a page has been copyrighted, rather than to act as proof of the date of publication. The copyright notice itself doesn’t give “legitimacy,” to one person or another, and an author can have a copyright in something regardless of whether or not they even have a copyright notice these days. If someone infringes another’s copyright, the act of predating notice on the copyright will not stop the copyright holder from taking legal action if they are so inclined.

There are some areas of copyright that aren’t so clear. Your first question involves a concept, or defense of copyright infringement, that is referred to as “independent creation,” where someone has created something similar to what someone else has created without there having been any copying at all. This post and the comments that follow it provide some information on that topic, and how the courts have interpreted it:

Independent Creation: A Bulwark of Copyright

If you are working on a web site as an employee of the company, then they may be the owners of the copyright. If you are contracting out to a company, then ideally your contract should define who the holder of the copyright is for the look and feel of the site, or its design, to avoid any confusion at all. It might not be a bad idea to also include a statement in that contract as to which law applies if your clients are located in a different legal jurisdiction than yours as well.

You might want to look at the Intellectual Property Office for issues involving the copyright law in the UK, or talk to an attorney or organization in the UK that specifically helps with copyright issues. They might be able to help you come up with something to include in your contracts that help define your rights in copyright on sites that you work upon.

In the US, a creator of a web page isn’t required to include copyright notices on their pages to gain copyright protection, and that’s true in the UK as well, according to the Copyright Basic Facts (pdf) publised by the Intellectual Property Office, but it’s not always true in other countries. Including a copyright notice isn’t a bad idea, because it makes it more clear to others who visit a page that the work on that page is copyrighted.

Also, if I copyright data on a website to the company I’m designing for, does this mean that all images and text on this site are copyrighted with the company, not where they were originally sourced from? Are you free to use images and text on a site without any copyright notification?

I included the disclaimer because, if someone is considering taking legal action against someone else, I would definitely urge them to seek the advice of an attorney who could take the specifics of their particular case into consideration in telling them the best steps to take.

While I do have a Juris Doctor Degree, I’m not a practicing attorney. I may amend that disclaimer slightly.

Thanks.