Copyright sign. Designation of a work of authorship with the sign ©.

The copyright symbol or copyright sign - © (capital Latin letter C in a circle) , is a symbol used in copyright notices for works other than sound recordings - photographs, paintings, literary works, software, etc. The use of the symbol was introduced into legal doctrine and practice by the Universal  Copyright Convention , signed in Geneva on September 6, 1952. The symbol is widely recognized as a legal means of indicating authorship, along with the year of creation of the work and the name of the author ( for example © Atanas Kostov 2023 ).

Today, including under the Berne Convention, such a copyright designation is no longer required (in most countries) as an indication of ownership, but still the use of this designation has important practical value, especially in order to comply with the requirement to indicate the author - argument from Article 14, Paragraph 1, Item 4 of the Bulgarian Copyright act.

In the United States, for example, the Berne Convention Implementation Act of 1988, effective March 1, 1989, removed the requirement for the use of the copyright symbol - © , to designate copyright subject matter, under the US copyright, but its presence or absence is legally significant for works published before that date and continues to affect the remedies available to the copyright owner whose copyright is infringed.