Everyone wants your stuff, and they don’t care how they get it.

There are two camps of thought regarding the protection of intellectual property.

One:

The population theory where there are so many billions of people on the planet, why should you worry about your stuff being stolen. Protection is for professionals, why should I waste my money on registering my dinky little design or short story when no one will ever read it and if they do, they’ll be nice enough to ask my permission because the world is a friendly place.

Two:

The all or nothing theory where only a copyright/trademark/patent will do, and nothing else is useful when theft occurs of an intellectual property.

Both theories have their merits and truisms, but there’s a giant lake in between these camps where people have lost work to theft have drowned because they had no protection to show proof of authorship or ownership.

Write Vault is the boat connecting the camps and keeping artists and writers afloat before they drown.  We provide time-stamped registrations that protect your work for minimal cost while in situations where you don’t think you need an official copyright or you aren’t ready to apply. It’s vitally important to register and show proof of authorship for that very first DRAFT of any piece. It sets a time-line as you work on subsequent drafts or versions of your work.

Without that, your work can fall prey to theft which is difficult to prove in a court of law. Even WITH patents, for instance, there are wars going on right now between giant corporations about which company stole which idea first, and more. Creating a TRAIL of evidence that is correctly time-stamped along the way gives your work concrete proof that you are the sole originator of the idea/product and theft can be proven.

You’ve heard us speak about product design theft on Etsy, writers too have had their work stolen, even with a WGA registration. I have read stories where a writer had their work registered with the WGA (and subsequently stolen) but there’s NO WAY to for an external party to verify a registration with the WGA unless the author is the one contacting the WGA office.

Excerpt from: http://www.wgawregistry.org/webrss/regdetails.html

       ACCESS TO REGISTRATION INFORMATION

Only the writers listed on the registration receipt may request confirmation of registration, the registration number, date of deposit, or any other information.

The Registry will honor such written requests from writers regarding the registration of their own work(s) only if accompanied by photo identification. All verification or confirmation requests from a writer should contain as much specific information as possible, such as registration number, title of material, effective date, and social security number of writer, and may be submitted by facsimile, mail, or in person. The fax number for the Registry is (323) 782-4803.

In the event an author is deceased, proof of death and consent of the representative of the heirs and/or estate must be presented in order to obtain specific information regarding the material. The representative must provide court documents authenticating his or her claim as legal heir.

How useful is that when trying to prove authorship? Not very.

Every registration certificate # should be easy to trace and quickly accessible when theft occurs or when you are submitting a document for review.

And that’s what Write Vault offers. 

No other digital registration company in the country offers a quick validation of records for use in cases of submission to third parties, or theft.

Anyone can make up a WGA number, you can even stamp a (c) on your work before it’s official, but with Write Vault, you can find out if a document you’ve received from someone is indeed registered, or as an author/artist you can have peace of mind knowing that you’ve created proof of authorship for the world to see. It’s more difficult to steal when you maintain a transparent atmosphere around your work.