Copyright

When you create something you really love, you get the incline to post it on your portfolio - behance, dribble, Instagram etc. However, this may open you up towards someone ripping you off.

How do you copyright your work?
You do not need to register your work. It's your copyright as soon as you create it.

No one, company, studio or agency can claim the work as their own unless they have a signed copyright assignation document from the creator, prior to printing, duplicating or publishing the work, and that includes the internet.
If you're self-employed, you usually own the intellectual property even if your work was commissioned by someone else - unless your contract with them gives them the rights.

The same goes the other way, never breach another's copyright, it can cost you a lot of money and damage your reputation.

Whenever you send work off to a client, put a small copyright icon next to it.
However, your work is under protection as soon as you have created it, and is fixed in a tangible format that is perceptible either directly, or with a device or machine.
Meaning anything like a website, image, photograph or video etc. is protected by your copyright and does in actual fact NOT need to display the copyright mark. The copyright is 'implicit' in the creation.

Public Domain: Generally speaking, artworks fall out of copyright and enter the public domain in the UK 70 years after the death of the artist.

Limitations of copyright: Facts, conceptual ideas not expressed in tangible form, public domain, in-expired copyright.

Licensing: In some cases you may be asked to 'license' your work. ie. a stock illustration/image/design on which you may wish to retain your copyright.

Clients say this all the time: "If I paid for it... I must own it?" Because they 'physically' own the work, it does NOT mean they 'intellectually' own it automatically unless YOU have it assigned in writing to them.