Sound recording copyright symbol


The sound recording copyright symbol, represented by the graphic symbol ', is the copyright symbol used to provide notice of copyright in a sound recording embodied in a phonorecord. Present in Europe since at least the mid-1960s, the use of the symbol in United States copyright law after 1971 was codified at 17 U.S.C. § 402 and is specified internationally in the Convention for the Protection of Producers of Phonograms Against Unauthorized Duplication of Their Phonograms.
The ' stands for phonogram, the legal term used in most English-speaking countries to refer to works known in U.S. copyright law as "sound recordings".
A sound recording has a separate copyright that is distinct from that of the underlying work, if any. The sound recording copyright notice extends to a copyright for just the sound itself and will not apply to any other rendition or version, even if performed by the same artist.

US law

The symbol was introduced to the US in 1971, essentially simultaneously in both international treaty and domestic United States.
In the United States, it was added by, which amended the 1909 Copyright Act by adding protection for sound recordings and prescribed a copyright notice for sound recordings:
In the United States, the sound recording copyright notice, which may only be affixed to a phonorecord, consists of three elements:
  1. the symbol;
  2. the year of first publication of the sound recording;
  3. an identification of the owner of the copyright, either by name, abbreviation or other designation by which it is generally known. The identification can be omitted if the owner is the sound recording's producer, and the producer is identified on associated packaging.

    Encoding

The symbol has a code point in Unicode at, with the supplementary Unicode character property names, "published" and "phonorecord sign". The similar glyphs and are not acceptable substitutes.