C in Circle Symbol: How to Type © and Write a Copyright Notice

The C in a circle symbol, ©, is the copyright mark. It tells anyone looking at a book, photo, website, song lyric sheet, or piece of software that someone claims legal ownership of the work. Under federal law it’s one of three accepted ways to give notice of copyright, along with the word “Copyright” and the abbreviation “Copr.”¹ Since March 1, 1989, adding the notice has been optional, not mandatory. Using it anyway still carries real legal weight.

How to Type © on Any Device

The shortcut depends on what you’re typing on:

Windows: Hold Alt and type 0169 on the numeric keypad, then release Alt.
Mac: Press Option + G.
iPhone: Type the word “copyright” and © appears in the keyboard’s suggestion strip. It’s also in the emoji keyboard’s symbols section.
Android: Tap the numbers key, then the symbols key (often labeled =<), and pick ©.
HTML: Use © or © in your source.

The Unicode code point is U+00A9, which works in essentially every modern font and operating system.

What a Proper Copyright Notice Looks Like

The symbol on its own is only part of a full notice. A complete notice has three elements written together on one line:

The © symbol, the word “Copyright,” or “Copr.” Any of the three satisfies the requirement.
The year the work was first published, meaning first made available to the public, not the date you created it.
The name of the copyright owner, a recognizable abbreviation, or a well-known alternative name.

Updated or Revised Works

When a work is updated over time, it’s acceptable to show separate dates for the original material and the new material. A book first published in 2015 with a chapter added in 2026 could read: © 2015 Jane Smith; new chapter © 2026 Jane Smith.³ For compilations and derivative works, only the year of the compilation’s own first publication has to appear.

When You Can Skip the Year

The year can be left out entirely for artwork, graphics, or sculptural works reproduced on greeting cards, postcards, stationery, jewelry, dolls, toys, or other useful articles.¹ A mug with an illustration on it, for example, needs only the © symbol and the owner’s name.

“All Rights Reserved”

This phrase shows up on many published works, but under current U.S. law it adds no protection beyond the copyright itself. It was historically required by the Buenos Aires Convention for protection in some Latin American countries, and that convention has since been overtaken by broader treaties. Including the phrase today is harmless but unnecessary.

Why the Symbol Still Matters

The statute says a copyright notice does three jobs: it informs the public that a work is copyrighted, it identifies the owner, and it shows the date of publication.¹

The practical effect shows up when someone gets sued. If a proper notice appeared on a copy the infringer had access to, a court will give “no weight” to their claim that they didn’t know the work was protected.⁴ Without the notice, an infringer can argue innocence and ask the court to cut statutory damages to as little as $200.⁵ That gap alone is reason to keep adding the symbol.

Where to Place the Notice

Placement has to give an ordinary person a reasonable chance of seeing the notice during normal use of the work.²

For books, acceptable spots include the title page, the verso (the back of the title page), either side of the front or back cover, or the first or last page of the main body. On websites, the standard practice is a footer notice that appears on every page. Photographers often add the notice at the bottom edge of the image or in the file’s metadata.

Software and Source Code

Software follows the same visibility principle. Downloaded or online applications usually carry the notice on the opening screen. When source code is licensed to others, the notice is typically placed both before the first line and after the last line of code. Physical media like CDs or USB drives should carry the notice on a label permanently attached to the media itself.

Magazines, Journals, and Anthologies

A single notice covering the whole collection is enough to protect the individual contributions inside it, regardless of who owns each piece and whether the pieces were previously published.⁶ Contributors can add their own notices too, but they aren’t required to. The one carve-out: advertisements placed by someone other than the collection’s copyright owner aren’t covered by the collection’s notice.

This is where many people get confused. Copyright protection starts automatically the moment a work is “fixed in any tangible medium of expression” — the instant you write something down, hit save, record audio, or take a photo.⁷ No form, no fee, no waiting period. Adding © announces rights you already have.

Registration with the U.S. Copyright Office is separate, and it matters if you ever need to enforce those rights. You can’t file a federal infringement lawsuit on a U.S. work until you’ve registered or at least submitted an application.⁸ Registration also unlocks statutory damages, which run from $750 to $30,000 per infringed work at the court’s discretion, and up to $150,000 per work when the infringement was willful.⁵ Without registration, you’re limited to proving your actual financial losses, which is usually harder and yields less.

Basic online registration costs $45 for a single work by a single author (not made for hire), or $65 for a standard application covering other situations.⁹

Sound Recordings Use a Different Symbol

If you’re marking audio, the symbol is ℗, a P in a circle, not ©. A sound recording has its own copyright, separate from the underlying song or spoken content. An album might carry © on the liner notes and artwork and ℗ on the audio itself. The three-part format is the same: symbol, year, owner’s name. If the record producer’s name appears on the label and no other name accompanies the notice, the producer’s name counts as the required identification.¹⁰

Attaching a © notice to a work you know isn’t yours, or to material you know isn’t copyrighted, is a criminal offense. Anyone who places a false copyright notice with fraudulent intent, or distributes material bearing a notice they know to be false, faces a fine of up to $2,500.¹¹ Knowledge and intent are the key elements; honest mistakes don’t trigger the provision, but deliberately claiming public domain material or someone else’s work does.

Works Published Before March 1, 1989

If you’re looking at an older work, the rules were stricter. Before the U.S. joined the Berne Convention, a copyright notice wasn’t optional. Leaving it off generally caused the work to lose copyright protection entirely.¹²

A narrow safety net exists for works first published between January 1, 1978, and March 1, 1989. The copyright could be preserved if the notice was missing from only a small number of distributed copies, or if the owner registered the work within five years and made a reasonable effort to add the notice to copies still being distributed.¹² For works published before 1978 without notice, the situation is generally harder, and those works may have entered the public domain permanently.

1
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 17 USC 401 – Notice of Copyright: Visually Perceptible Copies
2
U.S. Copyright Office. 17 USC Chapter 4 – Copyright Notice, Deposit, and Registration
3
U.S. Copyright Office. Copyright in Derivative Works and Compilations
4
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 17 US Code 401 – Notice of Copyright: Visually Perceptible Copies
5
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 17 USC 504 – Remedies for Infringement: Damages and Profits
6
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 17 USC 404 – Notice of Copyright: Contributions to Collective Works
7
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 17 US Code 102 – Subject Matter of Copyright: In General
8
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 17 USC 411 – Registration and Civil Infringement Actions
9
U.S. Copyright Office. Fees
10
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 17 US Code 402 – Notice of Copyright: Phonorecords of Sound Recordings
11
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 17 USC 506 – Criminal Offenses
12
U.S. Copyright Office. Copyright Notice