Copyfraud
noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 False claims of copyright, such as a claim of copyright ownership of public domain material. uncountable
"Copyfraud is falsely claiming copyright ownership of works in the public domain. […] Mazzone's article describes copyfraud within the context of US copyright law, but he points out that: ‘As a result of the Berne Convention, there are some basic similarities throughout much of the world.[’]"
Example
More examples"Copyfraud is falsely claiming copyright ownership of works in the public domain. […] Mazzone's article describes copyfraud within the context of US copyright law, but he points out that: ‘As a result of the Berne Convention, there are some basic similarities throughout much of the world.[’]"
Etymology
A compound of copy + fraud. Coined in an August 2005 article, "Copyfraud" http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=787244 by Jason Mazzone, an Associate Professor of Law at Brooklyn Law School.
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.