Copyright and Portfolio

Terms of Ownership:
First, I found this section to be informing in the book "Designing a Digital Portfolio." The author lists some terms that are probably good to know when dealing with copyright situations. Intellectual property is a "unique or new intangible asset created by the human mind." Copyright is a legal right that is given to the person or company that created the piece. A trademark is something that identifies a person or organization's product, and can be a logo, a phrase, a brand name, and/or a design. Fair Use is when you are able to use certain copyrighted material without having to get permission. More information? Visit Copyright.gov.

When it comes to certain things like Design Comps, you technically can use low quality images from stock sites as an example of what you might use in the project just to sell your idea. Once its done, and the client likes it, you can buy the high resolution photo. Clip Art follows the same kind of copyright rules. The author mentions a good tip to remember: "If it's good enough for you to want to use it, it's probably copyrighted.

What about your work, you might ask? Well, if you made something for your own purposes then the piece is yours to do with whatever you want to. If you sell your work, then you are still allowed to use it as a piece in your portfolio.
In case you were wondering, you can't sue for copyright infringement if you didn't register your work, states the author.

How can you protect your work? The author mentions a few suggestions the first regarding PDFs. By locking your file, people can't extract text or images without a password. Watermarks or digital "signatures" on digital files may be accessed through some programs. They can be invisible which hides the "identifying content inside the digital data of a file without changing the look or sound of the file." This can prove of who the piece belongs to.