If you’re in a rush, that title is all you need to know.

If you crave explanation, here it is.

One does not “copyright” (verb) one’s work. Copyright rights attach automatically, when sufficiently original works of authorship are fixed in tangible media of expression. That is, for example, when the poem is written on paper; the paint is applied to canvas; the recording or photograph is fixed in a digital file; the training materials are typed into Word or PowerPoint.

One may “register” such work with the United States Copyright Office. There are plenty of good reasons for doing so, but registration does not confer one’s copyright rights. As we just said, that happens automatically.

So when people say, for example, “I never copyrighted it;” or “I should copyright it” – what they really mean is, “I never registered it;” or “I should register it.”

For lawyers, especially those working with estate and marital property, this is a vitally important distinction. If the client says, “I don’t have any copyrights” they probably mean, “I never obtained any registrations for my works of authorship.” If the lawyer takes this statement at face value and fails to probe further, chances are excellent that the lawyer will be missing assets of the client’s estate. The copyrights (noun) do exist, and they do have value, even if they were never (verb) registered.