Meanings
- uncountablelawFalse claims of copyright, such as a claim of copyright ownership of public domain material.
The GPL and GPL FAQ don't say that applying a copyright and license (GPL) to Public Domain works after a trivial modification is copyfraud either, but it is.
2008 January 25, Rod Pemberton, “Re: modernization of FORTH, Age Results”, in comp.lang.forth (Usenet)2 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.[’]
2006, Mark Jordan, Putting Content Online: A Practical Guide for Libraries, →ISBN, pages 47, 48Made possible because people trust in the veracity of something that at times is nothing more than a chimera, copyfraud is a particularly acute problem when exacerbated by public institutions like museums.
2008, Eva Hemmungs Wirtén, “‘I am Two Mowglis’: Kipling, Disney, and a Lesson in How to Use (and Abuse) the Public Domain”, in Terms of Use: Negotiating the Jungle of the Intellectual Commons, →ISBN, page 105
Origin
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.
Full word history & related roots →Cite this entry
copyfraud. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/copyfraud
“copyfraud.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/copyfraud. Accessed November 3, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “copyfraud,” accessed November 3, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/copyfraud.
Source: copyfraud on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.