Important in advance: copyright does not arise through registration. A creative human achievement is protected as soon as it is created.
In practice, however, a different question often arises: how can it later be proven that a specific file already existed at a specific point in time and could be assigned to a person or organization? This is where MyCopyright, the new service from ProLitteris, comes in.
MyCopyright is aimed at authors, visual creators, publishing houses and other rightsholders. It is suitable, for example, for manuscripts before they are sent to book publishing houses, for exposés and script versions, for authentic press photographs, for artistic series of works, for illustrations, concepts, academic texts, product images, marketing material, audiovisual files or code. What matters is not the content category, but the file as a digital object.
MyCopyright can help whenever you expect that you may need to provide evidence at a later stage.
When sealing, ProLitteris links the file with a digital fingerprint and a point in time. When depositing, it is additionally stored in a protected repository. From this point on, a certificate is available at any time that documents the existence of the file and the time of securing.
MyCopyright does not replace legal considerations and an examination of whether someone has a claim to a work (copyright) or could assert other intellectual property rights. However, MyCopyright creates clearly defined evidence for later legal questions or for negotiations.
ProLitteris is launching a service that the Swiss IT company «Swiss Trust Layer» has developed together with other partners (including Swisscom). The first functions are sealing and depositing. Further functions, in particular declarations of human authorship («Human Authored») and additional verification or explanation steps, will follow later. In this way, ProLitteris clearly separates the technical evidence of a file from its later legal or substantive classification.
There is no obligation for authors and publishing houses to use the service. The practical benefit is obvious: anyone who sends a manuscript wants to be able to show, in the event of a conflict, which version existed at what time. Anyone who works professionally with images, drafts or concepts wants to document their own work before it circulates. And anyone who uses AI tools will in future more often have to explain which elements were created by humans, without AI support. MyCopyright offers initial support for this.
Using MyCopyright currently requires a rights administration agreement with ProLitteris (membership), in the role as author. For publishing houses and other rightsholders, the service will be made available at a later date. An expansion of the service is also planned for files with a purpose similar to copyright, for example in the area of trade secrets, media publications, security and compliance or inheritance law.