Copyrights

You must place the copyright notice in a manner and location that gives reasonable notice to the claim of copyright. In GNOME documentation, always use the front matter page for the copyright notice. See the front matter page of this style guide for an example of the appropriate way to assign copyrights.

11.2.1. Use of the Copyright Word and the Copyright Symbol

The front matter sections in templates for GNOME documentation are set up to generate both the word Copyright, and the copyright symbol ©. Although the use of both the copyright word and the copyright symbol together is not required in the USA and in many other countries, you should include both in GNOME documentation for the following reasons:

  1. There are no formal copyright notice requirements in the Berne Convention.
  2. The Universal Copyright Convention (UCC) states that any formality in a national law may be satisfied by placing a copyright notice consisting of © [copyright date] [copyright owner]. Therefore, although the notice Copyright © [copyright date] [copyright owner] might be redundant in jurisdictions that are members of the Berne Convention and the UCC, this is the notice that provides the most copyright coverage worldwide.
  3. The use of the word Copyright spelled out is also helpful in the case where the © symbol cannot be displayed. This is particularly helpful when the work on which the notice is affixed is in electronic form.

11.2.2. Copyrights for Multiple Authors

Assign a general copyright to each author in the front matter page. You do not need to add a separate copyright page for each section that each individual author provides. To credit authors for specific contributions to different parts of a book, you can add an author list as an appendix to your book. See Appendix E ― GDSG Contributors in this book for an example of an author list as an appendix.

TrademarksApplying the GFDL