The sound recording copyright symbol or phonogram symbol, represented by the graphic symbol , is the

copyright symbol The copyright symbol, or copyright sign, (a circled capital letter C for copyright), is the symbol used in copyright notices for works other than sound recordings. 17 U.S.C. The use of the symbol is described by the Universal Copyright Conv ...

used to provide notice of

copyright A copyright is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the exclusive right to copy, distribute, adapt, display, and perform a creative work, usually for a limited time. The creative work may be in a literary, artistic, education ...

in a

sound recording Sound recording and reproduction is the electrical, mechanical, electronic, or digital inscription and re-creation of sound waves, such as spoken voice, singing, instrumental music, or sound effects. The two main classes of sound recording te ...

(phonogram) embodied in a

phonorecord A phonorecord is defined by the United States Copyright Act of 1976 to be a material object that embodies sounds (other than those accompanying audio-visual recordings such as movies). From the Copyright Act: “Phonorecords” are material objec ...

( LPs,

audiotape An audio tape recorder, also known as a tape deck, tape player or tape machine or simply a tape recorder, is a sound recording and reproduction device that records and plays back sounds usually using magnetic tape for storage. In its present- ...

cassette tape The Compact Cassette or Musicassette (MC), also commonly called the tape cassette, cassette tape, audio cassette, or simply tape or cassette, is an analog magnetic tape recording format for audio recording and playback. Invented by Lou Ottens ...

compact disc The compact disc (CD) is a Digital media, digital optical disc data storage format that was co-developed by Philips and Sony to store and play digital audio recordings. In August 1982, the first compact disc was manufactured. It was then rele ...

s, etc.). It was first introduced in the

Rome Convention for the Protection of Performers, Producers of Phonograms and Broadcasting Organisations The Rome Convention for the Protection of Performers, Producers of Phonograms and Broadcasting Organisations also known as the International Convention for the Protection of Performers, Producers of Phonograms and Broadcasting Organisations and ...

. The United States added it to its copyright law as part of its adherence to the

Geneva Phonograms Convention The Convention for the Protection of Producers of Phonograms Against Unauthorized Duplication of Their Phonograms, also known as the Geneva Phonograms Convention, is a 1971 international agreement relating to copyright protection for sound record ...

. Its use is currently set out in

17 U.S.C. In the United States Code, Title 17 outlines its copyright law. It was codified into positive law on July 30, 1947. The latest version is from December 2016. * —Subject Matter and Scope of Copyright * —Copyright Ownership and Transfer * — ...

§ 402, the codification of the

Copyright Act of 1976 The Copyright Act of 1976 is a United States copyright law and remains the primary basis of copyright law in the United States, as amended by several later enacted copyright provisions. The Act spells out the basic rights of copyright holders, cod ...

. The letter P in stands for phonogram, the legal term used in most English-speaking countries to refer to works known in U.S. copyright law as "sound recordings". A sound recording has a separate copyright that is distinct from that of the underlying work (usually a musical work, expressible in musical notation and written lyrics), if any. The sound recording copyright notice extends to a copyright for just the sound itself and will not apply to any other rendition or version, even if performed by the same artist(s).

International treaties

The symbol first appeared in the

, a

multilateral treaty A multilateral treaty is a treaty to which two or more sovereign states are parties. Each party owes the same obligations to all other parties, except to the extent that they have stated reservation (law), reservations. Examples of multilateral tre ...

relating to copyright, in 1961. Article 11 of the Rome Convention provided: When the

, another multilateral copyright treaty, was signed in 1971, it included a similar provision in its Article 5:

United States law

The symbol was introduced into United States copyright law in 1971, when the US extended limited copyright protection to sound recordings. The United States anticipated signing onto the Geneva Phonograms Convention, which it had helped draft. On October 15, 1971, Congress enacted the Sound Recording Act of 1971, also known as the Sound Recording Amendment of 1971, which amended the

1909 Copyright Act The Copyright Act of 1909 () was a landmark statute in United States statutory copyright law. It went into effect on July 1, 1909. The 1909 Act was repealed and superseded by the Copyright Act of 1976, which went into effect on January 1, 1978; ...

by adding protection for sound recordings and prescribed a copyright notice for sound recordings. The Sound Recording Act added a copyright notice provision specific to sound recordings, which incorporated the symbol prescribed in the Geneva Convention, to the end of section 19 of the 1909 Copyright Act: The designation of the symbol continues in § of the current

. That section provides for the a non-mandatory copyright notice on sound recordings: :If a notice appears on the phonorecords, it shall consist of the following three elements: ::(1) the symbol ℗ (the letter P in a circle); and ::(2) the year of first publication of the sound recording; and ::(3) the name of the owner of copyright in the sound recording, or an abbreviation by which the name can be recognized, or a generally known alternative designation of the owner; if the producer of the sound recording is named on the phonorecord labels or containers, and if no other name appears in conjunction with the notice, the producer’s name shall be considered a part of the notice.

Encoding

The symbol has a

code point In character encoding terminology, a code point, codepoint or code position is a numerical value that maps to a specific character. Code points usually represent a single grapheme—usually a letter, digit, punctuation mark, or whitespace—but ...

Unicode Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology Technical standard, standard for the consistent character encoding, encoding, representation, and handling of Character (computing), text expre ...

at , with the supplementary

Unicode character property The Unicode Standard assigns various properties to each Unicode character and code point. The properties can be used to handle characters (code points) in processes, like in line-breaking, script direction right-to-left or applying controls. Some ...

names, "published" and "phonorecord sign".

References

{{navbox punctuation Copyright law Typographical symbols United States copyright law Symbols introduced in 1971

International treaties

United States law

Encoding

See also

References