Word.ws English Dictionary

poor man's copyright

poor man's copyright noun: the practice of mailing a sealed, dated copy of one's work to oneself as a proof of copyright ownership, rather than registering the work with a copyright office.

Noun

poor man's copyright (uncountable)

  1. (informal) The practice of mailing a sealed, dated copy of one's work to oneself as a proof of copyright ownership, rather than registering the work with a copyright office.

Questions about poor man's copyright

What does poor man's copyright mean?
Poor man's copyright means the practice of mailing a sealed, dated copy of one's work to oneself as a proof of copyright ownership, rather than registering the work with a copyright office.
What part of speech is poor man's copyright?
Poor man's copyright is a noun.

Words near poor man's copyright in the dictionary

  1. poor man's cabbage
  2. poor man's cake
  3. poor man's caviar
  4. poor man's cocaine
  5. poor man's concrete
  6. poor man's copyright
  7. poor man's diamond
  8. poor man's fridge
  9. poor man's ginseng
  10. poor man's goose
  11. poor man's latte

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: poor man's copyright (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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