Notary Public

What does a Notary Public do?

If you’re researching copyrights and intellectual property law, you’ve probably heard the term “notary public”. You’ve probably guessed, correctly, that a notary public is some sort of registered agent of the US or UK government, and that it’s got something to do with getting a copyright, but what, exactly, is a notary public?

A notary public’s abilities include the administration of oaths and statutory declarations, or a notary public can witness, and authenticate documents. Depending upon the jurisdiction, a notary public may be able to perform other legal services, as well.

In a number of countries and states throughout the world, notaries are generally required to undergo some form of special training to learn how to properly perform their duties. In some places, a notary public actually has to serve as an apprentice for a certain period of time before they can go on to become fully commissioned or licensed in the notary profession. In a few countries, some licensed lawyers also have to undergo additional training in notary public duties before being permitted to the bar.

Depending on the country, a notary public actually may have far more or far fewer duties and abilities than in other countries. For example, within the United Kingdom, a notary public can actually perform any task that can be provided by a lawyer, short of actually representing clients before a judge (unless the notary public also becomes licensed as a barrister).

We could get into the long and storied history of the office of notary and so on, but let’s back to how this relates to intellectual property…

It is basically the notary public’s position as legal witness that makes the office of notary so important to copyrighting and, certainly, intellectual property in general. By simply being able to witness that an author has shown proof of their intellectual property, a notary public is basically able to say, “Yes, he showed me that long before this other person used the idea to make money”. For authentication, most jurisdictions will have a notary public stamp a design document or sign certificates of authenticity, etcetera, to give legally binding evidence of their witness.

In most jurisdictions, a notary public will charge a small fee for witnessing the ownership of intellectual property. It’s interesting to note that a notary public’s abilities remain active, regardless of their profession, as long as they keep their licensing up to date. So if you have a friend who is a notary public, they should be able to help you register copyrights.

The alternative is the “poor man’s copyright”, which involves taking a design document, a manuscript, sheet music, etcetera, and mailing it to yourself. This makeshift copyright uses the postmark date as a sort of pseudo-witness regarding when the earliest evidence of an intellectual property’s existence. As long as the sender/recipient/author does not unseal the envelope until ownership needs to be proven in court, this form of copyright should hold up, but there isn’t really a guarantee.

This method is legal, and it kind of works, usually, but it isn’t really recommended. It should really only be used as a sort of temporary fix. For example, if you’re worried that your intellectual property might be stolen, and you don’t have time to go find a real notary public, or you’re short on money to pay for notary fees, then the makeshift method will provide a sort of a safety net, just in case, but it shouldn’t be used as your primary mode of protecting your intellectual property, because, while it does show some evidence of who created the property and when, it’s much easier to dispute than a notary public stamp.

A notary public’s abilities do extend well past intellectual property of course. Basically, anything you would want to author and then prove to a court of law can be witnessed and authenticated by a notary public. For example, a will should go through a notary public well before it goes into action, a contract should be witnessed by a notary public so as to avoid dispute, and so on. For the purpose of this article, we’ve focused mainly on the notary public’s abilities and duties as they pertain to copyright and intellectual property. If you’d like to learn more, there’s a wealth of information on the history of the offices of notary throughout the world, the minute and more significant differences in a notary public’s duties from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, and so on… It really is quite interesting, if you’d like to read more.