*** Incidentally, the Times story notes that Di Modica “created the sculpture ‘Charging Bull’ nearly 30 years ago [and] copyrighted and trademarked [it].” Ouch. This is one of my pet peeves: It is improper to use copyright as a verb in this way (as in “He copyrighted the sculpture,” or “You should copyright that song,” or the like), and it sows much confusion about how copyrights (and trademarks, too — though that’s the subject for another day) actually work to use the word that way.

It used to make sense to talk about “copyrighting” a work of art; prior to the enactment of the 1976 Copyright Act, you had no copyright rights in a work that you created until you did something, namely (a) “publishing” the work, and (b) registering it with the Copyright Office. To “copyright” a work, then, meant doing these things, at which point your work was “copyrighted” (i.e., protected by copyright).

But that all changed in the 1976 Act; works are “copyrighted” (i.e., protected by copyright) the moment they are created. You don’t have to do anything to get that protection; it’s inherent, the law now says, in the work itself, and the copyright rights exist from the moment of the work’s creation. It is thus nonsensical to say that Di Modica created the sculpture and “copyrighted” it; it’s already “copyrighted,” as soon as it had been created. Using copyright as a verb obscures that very fundamental copyright principle, making people think that there’s something you have to do, steps you have to take, in order to obtain copyright, when in fact there are none.