Word.ws English Dictionary

copyfraud

copyfraud noun: false claims of copyright, such as a claim of copyright ownership of public domain material.

Noun

copyfraud (uncountable)

  1. False claims of copyright, such as a claim of copyright ownership of public domain material.
    • 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, 48
    • 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)

Origin of copyfraud

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.

Questions about copyfraud

What does copyfraud mean?
Copyfraud means false claims of copyright, such as a claim of copyright ownership of public domain material.
What part of speech is copyfraud?
Copyfraud is a noun.

Words near copyfraud in the dictionary

  1. copyfighter
  2. copyfighters
  3. copyfighting
  4. copyfights
  5. copyfought
  6. copyfraud
  7. copyfree
  8. copygirl
  9. copygirls
  10. copygraph
  11. copygraphed

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: copyfraud (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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