Along with the information already posted for this question, regarding registering the copyright with the Library of Congress...I highly recommend this also, which would require the fees and a deposit of a copy of the map.

 

If your museum does not, and someone else creates a similar map, or recreates your museum's and submits a registration on their own (and maybe claim that they produced theirs before yours and independently of yours) then they would own the copyright. If they earned a profit by selling/reproducing the map in any way, shape or form the burden of proof of ownership would be to the museum to prove otherwise.

 

However, you should include, with the copyright information printed on this map -anything similar to the effect that, 'Any use and/or reproduction of this map in part or whole including original data contained within, must be requested in writing and approved by this museum/organization'.

 

If you do not add any statement such as this, than it is implied that the map can be reproduced as long as it is properly credited to the museum.

 

If the map your staff created is in any way extracted from any existing maps and data, then what you may have is a 'rendition' or a 'version' and not an original - but you can still register a copyright for it as such.

 

Since the map was created by staff for the museum, it is considered 'work for hire' and therefore the museum owns all rights to the map. The creators of the map relinquish their right to profit and reproduce the map for personal gain without permission from the museum.

 

Pam

 

 

In a message dated 11/15/2005 3:50:17 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, [log in to unmask] writes: