We have made a serial of innovative modules and we would like to protect them. We have been told that it is sufficient writing underneath “copyright” followed by our name. Is it true? Is this kind of precaution enough?

The protection of modules, or better known as the “form” often used for the development of normal business activities, is rather uncertain. For some kind of prescribed forms, made up mainly by tables, schemes and other subdivisions of pages to be used, and also for the billings with which we pay taxes and other utilities, it is possible to get a patent for utility model related to the same module, whilst in other cases, due to the lack of “technical” character of the provided forms, the patent cannot be obtained. Particularly, if the modules contain mainly written text, describe procedures, or consist only of formulas, it is not possible resorting to the patent but rights can be claimed on the basis of the law on copyright. In this instance writing the wording “copyright” at the bottom of the page could be enough, followed by the name of the authors and by the date of the first publication. In any case, to have a proper proof of realization and of the author’s names, it would be advisable depositing the modules at the SIAE as unpublished work. The SIAE would not check up on the contents, but will send a progressive number of registration to the requestor and a date from which the deposit will be valid. This would facilitate the probationary load of the modules author, should there be a lawsuit for plagiarism of them.