of or relating to copyrights.
Also copyrighted. protected by copyright.
A copyright is a document that gives the ownership rights over artistic work, like songs or stories. If you don't get a copyright for your brilliant new novel, someone could adapt it into a movie without paying you a dime. Copyright means exactly what it sounds like: the right to make copies of something. If you copyright a song, a singer will to have to pay you to record it. Usually, copyright only lasts for a certain number of years. In the U.S. when a book or song has had a copyright for more than 75 years, that expires and it becomes "public domain," which means nobody owns the rights to it anymore.
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Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Last year, Disney sent a cease-and-desist letter to Character.AI, alleging copyright infringement of its well-known characters, including Elsa, Moana, Peter Parker and Darth Vader.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 18, 2026
The filing—from publishers suing Microsoft and OpenAI for alleged copyright infringement—suggests top staff at the companies thought that scraping news sites to train AI models could ultimately damage or destroy those publications.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 18, 2026
The Microsoft representative said the company lays out in court filings why its use of the information is transformative and consistent with copyright law and “why Copilot is not a substitute for publishers’ journalism.”
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 17, 2026
But he was hit by more copyright strikes immediately after he paid.
From BBC ● Sep. 8, 2026
At one point she’d decided she needed to get a safe deposit box for her mother’s Bible and hair; later she asked if she needed to copyright Henrietta’s signature so no one would steal it.
From "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks" by Rebecca Skloot
And celebrities with valuable intellectual property rights, such as copyrights from the Reiners’ many film and television properties, tend to establish trusts.
From Salon ● Dec. 25, 2025
Now they sell AI-created images with the guarantee that these don’t infringe copyrights.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Dec. 15, 2025
The deal comes amid reports Disney lawyers sent Google a cease-and-desist letter on Wednesday accusing the tech firm of infringing its copyrights "on a massive scale".
From BBC ● Dec. 11, 2025
They alleged that Cox’s subscribers infringed their copyrights in sound recordings and musical compositions by copying and distributing them via BitTorrent and other networks.
From Slate ● Nov. 28, 2025
Just for fun, I can give it to Father on his birthday, together with all the copyrights.
From "The Diary of a Young Girl" by Anne Frank
But Olly - who has dealt with these before when he has mistakenly posted copyrighted material - says they are usually easy to deal with, and "you can easily tell the difference".
From BBC ● Sep. 8, 2026
In May, multiple publishers, including Hachette, Cengage, Elsevier and Turow, sued Meta in a New York court for allegedly stealing copyrighted content.
From Barron's ● Sep. 3, 2026
BBC Newsbeat has obtained the filings, first reported by video game website Kotaku, external, demanding Microsoft-owned site GitHub and chat app Discord turn over the user details of accounts thought to be sharing "copyrighted material".
From BBC ● Aug. 21, 2026
The fact that AI-generated text can’t be copyrighted has made it one of the hard lines the industry has been able to enforce.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 17, 2026
It was copyrighted 1972 by the Esso company.
From "Paper Towns" by John Green
The nonprofit recently trademarked its name and is in the process of copyrighting its livestream.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 2, 2026
She said she had been running her own copyrighting business, but found herself struggling while devoting thousands of hours getting ready for her legal fight.
From BBC ● May 10, 2023
Its widespread use has been facilitated by Kruger’s disinterest in copyrighting her work.
From New York Times ● Jul. 14, 2022
Senior manager of LHI Sonia Mora said the county is in the process of copyrighting Abuelina and her family members to ensure they are not used for commercial purposes.
From Washington Post ● Aug. 8, 2021
The average quality prints are not likely to be stolen, and so the copyrighting of them is unnecessary.
From Making Your Camera Pay by Frederick C. Davis
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
