Used to express a completed action that took place before another specific past action occurred.
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Fisher says he was soon instructed not to send any more emails, and eventually learned that Nirvana had copyrighted the smiley image and T-shirt design decades earlier.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 22, 2020
Teller had copyrighted it as a pantomime in 1983, but hadn’t revealed the underlying mechanism.
From New York Times ● Jul. 24, 2017
The quintet’s importance dimmed; LaRocca even sued original clarinetist “Yellow” Nuñez, who had copyrighted the breakthrough “Livery Stable Blues,” for stealing his tune.
From Slate ● Feb. 23, 2017
By that time Salinger had copyrighted the correspondence.
From Time Magazine Archive
Then he found the "Alta" had copyrighted his letters and were reluctant to allow him to use them.
From The Boys' Life of Mark Twain by Albert Bigelow Paine
