The copyright symbol, designated by © (a circled "C"), is the symbol used to provide notice of copyright in works other than sound recordings (which are indicated with the ℗ symbol). The use of the symbol is described in United States copyright law, and, internationally, by the Universal Copyright Convention. The C stands for copyright.

In the United States, the copyright notice consists of three elements:

1. the © symbol, or the word "Copyright" or abbreviation "Copr.";
2. the year of first publication of the copyrighted work; and
3. an identification of the owner of the copyright, either by name, or abbreviation of other designation by which it is generally known.

Because the © symbol has long been unavailable on typewriters and ASCII-based computer systems, it has been common to approximate this symbol with the characters (c).

The character is mapped in Unicode under position U+00A9. On Windows systems, it may be entered by means of Alt codes, by holding the ALT key while typing the numbers 0169 on the numeric keypad. On Macintosh systems, it may be entered with Option-G. The HTML entity is ©.

The character CIRCLED LATIN SMALL LETTER C (ⓒ, mapped in Unicode at position U+24D2) is sometimes used as a substitute copyright symbol where the actual copyright symbol is not available in the character set; for example, in some Korean code pages.

Related symbols

• The sound recording copyright symbol is the symbol ℗ (the capital letter P enclosed by a circle), and is used to designate copyright in a sound recording
• The copyleft symbol, a backwards C in a circle, is a logo associated with the copyleft form of licensing; it has no legal meaning.
• The registered trademark symbol is the symbol ® (the capital letter R enclosed by a circle), and is used in some jurisdictions to designate a trademark that has been registered in an official office of record (such as the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in the United States).

See also

• Sound recording copyright symbol

References