AI-Generated Content and Copyright: Who Owns What When a Machine Helps Create It

A marketing director generates a set of product images with an AI tool, drops them into a campaign, and later wants to stop a competitor from lifting the same visuals for their own ads. A novelist uses an AI assistant to draft transitional scenes, then tries to register the finished book. A musician trains a vocal model on years of his own recordings after losing his voice to illness, and needs to know if the resulting songs belong to him. Each of these situations runs into the same question the U.S. Copyright Office has spent the last few years working through: AI-generated content and copyright ownership don't follow the same rules people assume.

The short version is that copyright still requires a human author, but that rule is more nuanced in practice than it sounds, and the details of how a tool was used often decide the outcome.

Where the Human Authorship Line Actually Sits

The Copyright Office's position, laid out across its 2023 registration guidance and its 2025 report on generative AI copyrightability, is that a work generated purely by a machine with no human creative control cannot be registered. The Office reaffirmed this after Dr. Stephen Thaler tried to register an image his AI system produced entirely on its own, listing the machine as the author. Courts sided with the Office at every level, and the Supreme Court declined to take up the case in early 2026, leaving the human authorship requirement intact.

Typing a prompt and accepting whatever the model produces doesn't count as authorship, because the expressive choices, the exact rendering, composition, and detail, are being made by the system rather than the person. The Office has explained that complex AI models are inherently unpredictable, so a person entering the same prompt twice might get two different results, which signals a lack of the kind of control copyright law expects from an author.

What Actually Does Qualify for Protection

The distinction that matters is whether AI functioned as a tool assisting a human creative vision or as a replacement for it. A photographer using Photoshop to edit an image doesn't lose authorship over the edited photo. The Office treats certain AI uses the same way. When a human selects, arranges, or substantially modifies AI-generated material with real creative judgment, the resulting work, or at least the human-authored portions of it, can be registered.

A useful real-world example involves country artist Randy Travis, who lost most of his ability to sing after a stroke. His team trained an AI vocal model on his existing recordings and used it to convert another singer's performance into Travis's voice for a new song. The Copyright Office registered the work, because the AI was functioning as a tool carrying out a human creative team's vision rather than generating independent expression on its own. That distinction, tool versus author, is the one to watch.

A graphic novel combining human-written text with AI-generated images offers the opposite lesson. The Office registered the book but specifically excluded the individual AI-generated images from protection, since arranging existing generated images into a story isn't the same as creating the images themselves.

What This Means for Businesses Using AI Tools

Companies building marketing materials, product content, or creative assets with AI tools need to think about ownership before they build a business around the output. If a design was generated by AI with minimal human input beyond a prompt, nobody owns the specific visual, meaning a competitor can copy it without infringing anything. Businesses relying on AI-assisted work should document the human contribution as it happens, keep records of edits, selections, and creative decisions made after generation, and disclose the AI involvement honestly on any copyright application, since the Office requires that disclosure and has denied applications where it wasn't provided.

Contracts matter here too. A brand hiring a freelancer or agency that uses AI tools should spell out who owns the resulting content and confirm the freelancer isn't submitting purely machine-generated material without disclosing it, since a copyright claim built on an undisclosed AI foundation can unravel later.

Registering Work That Mixes Human and AI Contributions

Applicants registering a work containing AI-generated material have to identify the human author, use the standard application, and describe the human contribution in the application itself. The Office reviews these on a case-by-case basis, and a registration obtained without proper disclosure can be challenged or corrected through a supplementary filing. Getting this right at the outset avoids a registration that looks solid until someone actually tests it.

Where This Is Headed

The law here isn't fully settled, and the Copyright Office has acknowledged that its analysis could shift if AI tools evolve to give users more direct control over expressive output. For now, the safest approach treats AI as a drafting or editing tool rather than a stand-in for the creative work itself. If your business relies on AI-assisted content and you need clarity on what you actually own, or you're facing a dispute over material generated with these tools, the intellectual property attorneys at Braslow Legal can help you sort through the ownership questions AI-generated content and copyright law raise before they turn into a costly problem.

Non-Compete and Non-Solicitation Clauses in Florida: What Changed and What Business Owners Need to Know

A Tampa medical device company spends eighteen months training a sales rep on proprietary pricing models and a client list built over a decade. She leaves for a direct competitor six months later. Whether the company can stop her turns on the same question business owners across the state are asking: was there a non-compete clause in Florida that actually holds up, and does it cover what they thought it covered?

Florida has always been friendlier to employers on this front than most states, but the rules shifted meaningfully in 2025. The Florida CHOICE Act took effect on July 1 of that year and layered a new, more aggressive framework on top of the existing statute. Business owners who haven't touched their employment agreements since then are likely working with outdated documents, and employees who assume these clauses are unenforceable are operating on old assumptions too.

The Baseline That Still Applies

Section 542.335 of the Florida Statutes has governed restrictive covenants since the late 1990s, and it remains in effect for any agreement that doesn't qualify under the new CHOICE Act framework. A non-compete under this statute is enforceable if it's in writing, signed, tied to a legitimate business interest such as trade secrets or substantial customer relationships, and reasonable in time, geography, and scope. Courts have generally treated restrictions of six months or less as presumptively reasonable and anything beyond two years as presumptively unreasonable. Most non-competes signed by Florida employees, especially those earning modest to mid-range salaries, will keep being evaluated under this older framework.

What the CHOICE Act Actually Changed

The CHOICE Act didn't replace section 542.335. It created a separate, optional path that gives employers stronger enforcement tools for a specific category of highly paid workers. To qualify as a "covered employee," a worker's salary has to exceed twice the annual mean wage for the relevant Florida county, a threshold that lands somewhere between roughly $80,000 and $150,000 depending on location. Healthcare practitioners are excluded entirely.

For employees who clear that bar, a covered non-compete can run for up to four years, doubling what courts had generally treated as the outer limit under the old statute. A covered garden leave agreement can require an employer to keep paying an employee's full salary and benefits for up to four years while barring them from working elsewhere, even though the employee isn't doing the job anymore.

Getting the benefit of these longer terms isn't automatic. An employer has to advise the employee in writing of the right to consult an attorney, give at least seven days to review the agreement, and have the employee acknowledge in writing that they're receiving confidential information or customer relationships as part of the deal. Skip any of those steps and the agreement falls back to the older, more limited statute.

The four-year term is the headline number, but the more consequential change is how courts handle disputes once filed. A judge is required to issue a preliminary injunction stopping a covered employee from working for a competitor once the employer shows the agreement qualifies and a violation likely occurred. The employee then carries the burden of proving, by clear and convincing evidence, that they won't use confidential information or perform similar work, or that the employer breached its own obligations. That flips the usual dynamic where an employer has to prove ongoing harm before a court will freeze the situation, and an employee may find themselves blocked from a new job before the dispute is resolved on the merits.

Non-Solicitation Clauses Follow Different Rules

Non-solicitation agreements restrict a departing employee from pursuing former clients or poaching former coworkers rather than barring them from working in the industry altogether. They get evaluated under the same legitimate-business-interest framework but tend to draw less judicial pushback, since restricting contact with a defined list of clients someone personally serviced is easier to defend than a blanket prohibition on working in the field. Agencies, financial advisory firms, and other sales-driven businesses often get more practical value out of a well-drafted non-solicitation clause than an aggressive non-compete that invites a fight.

What Business Owners Should Actually Do

Reviewing existing agreements against the new framework is the first practical step, since a contract drafted before 2025 won't automatically pick up CHOICE Act protections just because the law changed. Employers who want the longer terms and the injunction advantage need new agreements, or amendments, that satisfy the notice and disclosure requirements from the start, and that means identifying which employees actually clear the compensation threshold before applying that language to them.

For employees, assuming a signed non-compete won't hold up is a risky bet in Florida. Courts here enforce these agreements regularly, and the 2025 changes make that even more true for higher earners. Reading the geographic scope and compensation threshold before signing avoids a far more expensive conversation later.

Building Agreements That Hold Up

Florida's restrictive covenant law rewards precision over aggression. A non-compete clause in Florida that's broader than necessary invites a court to modify it, and one that skips the CHOICE Act's procedural requirements loses the benefit of the new law without gaining anything in return. Whether you're structuring agreements for key employees, negotiating an exit, or facing a dispute over one already in place, the business and employment attorneys at Braslow Legal can help you draft a non-compete clause in Florida that fits your actual risk and holds up when it counts.

NIL Deals for Florida Athletes: What Student and Amateur Athletes Need to Know Before Signing

A high school quarterback in Tampa gets a direct message from a local car dealership offering free use of a truck in exchange for a few Instagram posts. A college volleyball player in Gainesville is asked to sign an "exclusive" apparel deal that runs through her senior year. A travel baseball prospect's parents are handed a contract from a supplement company that never mentions what happens if the product gets recalled. NIL deals have opened real money to athletes who never had access to it before, and the paperwork behind those opportunities is rarely as simple as it looks.

Since Florida passed one of the earliest state laws permitting college athletes to profit from their name, image, and likeness, the rules have kept shifting. High schools followed with their own frameworks. Brands moved fast to sign athletes at younger ages. What hasn't caught up nearly as quickly is athlete and family understanding of what these contracts actually say, and what they give away.

What an NIL Deal Actually Is

At its core, an NIL agreement lets a business pay an athlete to use their name, image, likeness, or personal brand for promotional purposes. That could mean a social media post, an appearance at a store opening, a signed jersey sold through a retailer, or a licensing arrangement where a company puts an athlete's likeness on a video game or trading card. The compensation might be cash, free product, or a mix of both.

The FHSAA now permits high school athletes in Florida to enter NIL deals under specific conditions, and Florida's college NIL statute, along with subsequent NCAA policy changes, opened the door for university athletes as well. Neither framework functions like a typical employment relationship. An athlete isn't an employee of the school or, usually, of the brand. That distinction matters because it shapes what protections exist and what recourse an athlete has if a deal goes wrong.

Where These Contracts Go Wrong

Most problems trace back to a handful of recurring issues, and they show up whether the athlete is seventeen or twenty-two.

Exclusivity clauses are the biggest one. A contract might quietly lock an athlete out of working with any competing brand in a category for the life of the agreement, sometimes well beyond the actual promotional work being done. An athlete who signs a two-year exclusive deal with one shoe brand for a modest flat fee has effectively closed the door on a better offer that might come along in year two.

Term length is another. Some deals auto-renew unless the athlete affirmatively cancels, which is easy to miss when a family is excited about the initial signing bonus and doesn't read past page one.

Then there's ownership of content. If a brand pays for a photo shoot or video, who owns the footage afterward, and can the company keep using it after the deal ends? Plenty of contracts are silent on this, which usually means the brand assumes broad rights it never explicitly negotiated for.

School and league compliance is its own layer entirely. Florida high schools and colleges both have rules about disclosure, conflicts with team sponsors, and what qualifies as an acceptable NIL activity versus what starts to look like impermissible recruiting inducement. An athlete who signs first and asks questions later can end up jeopardizing eligibility over a deal that seemed harmless at the time.

Who Actually Needs to Review the Contract

Parents of minors carry legal responsibility that many don't realize extends to contract review, not just permission-granting. In Florida, a minor's ability to disaffirm a contract creates real uncertainty for brands and real leverage for families, but that leverage only helps if someone understands it exists before signing rather than after a dispute.

College athletes face a different set of pressures. Agents and marketing representatives are now part of the landscape, and Florida law has specific requirements around who can represent a student-athlete and how those relationships must be disclosed to the school. An athlete who signs with an unregistered agent can lose eligibility over it.

What a Solid NIL Contract Actually Looks Like

A workable agreement spells out the scope of activities in specific terms rather than broad promotional language, sets a defined term with a clear end date, addresses what happens to content and images after the relationship ends, and states plainly whether the arrangement is exclusive and in what categories. It should also account for what happens if the athlete transfers schools, gets injured, or the brand itself gets sold or changes ownership.

None of this requires an athlete to distrust every opportunity that comes their way. It requires someone reading the fine print before the signature goes on the page.

Getting the Terms Right Before You Sign

NIL opportunities move fast, and the athletes who come out ahead aren't necessarily the ones who land the biggest offers. They're the ones who understood what they signed. Whether you're a parent reviewing your child's first deal or a college athlete weighing a multi-year licensing agreement, having someone look at the contract language before you commit protects the earning potential you're trying to build in the first place. The sports and entertainment attorneys at Braslow Legal work with Florida athletes and families to review NIL deals, spot the clauses that create long-term problems, and negotiate terms that actually reflect what the athlete is giving up and gaining.

What Is Public Domain? Understanding Trademark and Copyright

Every January 1st, a fresh batch of creative works loses its copyright protection and becomes free for anyone to use. The early Mickey Mouse cartoon Steamboat Willie entered this space in 2024, setting off a wave of confusion about what people could actually do with it. That confusion captures the heart of a question Braslow Legal hears often: the public domain is real and powerful, but it doesn't work the way most people assume, especially once trademark enters the picture.

Understanding what falls into the public domain, and what stubbornly stays protected, saves creators and business owners from expensive mistakes. The line between free to use and legally risky is rarely as obvious as it looks.

What the Public Domain Actually Means

A work in the public domain belongs to no one and everyone. There's no owner to ask for permission, no royalty to pay, and no license to negotiate. You can copy it, adapt it, sell it, or build something new on top of it.

Works arrive there through a few routes. The most common is the simple passage of time, since copyright lasts for a limited term and expires. Some works enter because their creators deliberately dedicated them to the public. Others were never eligible for protection at all, like facts, basic ideas, and most works produced by the federal government.

For works published in the United States, anything from 1929 or earlier is now in the public domain. Newer works follow longer terms, generally the life of the author plus seventy years, or for corporate works, ninety-five years from publication. The rules shift depending on when something was created and published, which is why dating a work matters so much before you assume it's free.

Where Copyright and Trademark Diverge

Here's the trap that catches people. Copyright and trademark are different systems with different lifespans, and a work can be free under one while protected under the other.

Copyright protects creative expression and eventually expires. Trademark protects brand identifiers, the names, logos, and symbols that tell consumers who makes a product, and it can last indefinitely as long as the owner keeps using it in commerce. That difference is everything.

Take the Steamboat Willie example. The cartoon's copyright expired, so you can reproduce and adapt that specific film. But Disney still uses Mickey Mouse as a trademark, a symbol of the company itself. Slap that early Mickey on merchandise in a way that suggests Disney made it or endorsed it, and you've potentially stepped from safe copyright territory into trademark infringement. The character is simultaneously free and protected, just under different laws.

What You Can and Can't Assume

Public domain status invites a few persistent misconceptions worth clearing up:

• Finding something online for free does not mean it's in the public domain, since most internet content is automatically copyrighted the moment it's created

• A new edition, translation, or restoration of an old work can carry its own fresh copyright on the new material, even if the underlying work is free

• Public domain in one country does not guarantee the same status elsewhere, because terms vary by nation

• Using a public domain character commercially can still trigger trademark or right-of-publicity issues depending on how you present it

The safest approach is to verify a work's status rather than guess. Resources like the Copyright Office records and well-maintained public domain databases help, but borderline cases reward a careful look before you build a product around them.

Putting the Public Domain to Work

For creators and businesses, the public domain is a genuine asset. Classic literature, expired musical compositions, vintage imagery, and old films offer raw material you can adapt freely into new books, products, designs, and adaptations. Entire businesses run on republishing and reimagining public domain works.

The key is staying alert to the trademark overlay. You can publish your own edition of a long-expired novel, but you can't brand it in a way that confuses consumers about who's behind it. You can build on a public domain story, but you should avoid borrowing trademarked names or logos tied to a modern company's branded version. When the work involves a recognizable character or a brand with ongoing commercial use, the analysis gets more involved, and a misstep can turn a free resource into a legal headache.

The Bottom Line

So, what is public domain? It's the body of creative work no longer locked behind copyright, free for anyone to use, build on, and profit from. The catch is that trademark law runs on a separate track, meaning a work can be open under copyright while a brand element tied to it stays firmly protected. Sorting out which rules apply to a specific work, before you invest in it, is what separates a smart creative move from a costly one. If you're planning to build on public domain material and want certainty about where the boundaries lie, the intellectual property attorneys at Braslow Legal can help you use it confidently and avoid the traps that catch the unprepared.

How to Sell Fan Art Legally: A Guide for Artists

Fan art lives in a legal gray zone that trips up even experienced creators. An artist paints a beloved cartoon character, lists prints on Etsy, builds a following, and then receives a takedown notice or a cease and desist letter that arrives out of nowhere. The frustration is understandable, because the work is original in execution. The problem is that originality of skill doesn't erase someone else's ownership of the underlying character. Artists come to Braslow Legal regularly trying to understand where the line sits, and the honest answer is that selling fan art legally takes more planning than most people expect.

The good news is that there are legitimate paths to profit from fandom-inspired work without inviting a lawsuit. Knowing the rules ahead of time lets you build a business that survives its own success.

Why Most Fan Art Technically Infringes

Two areas of intellectual property law apply to fan art. Copyright protects the creative expression of a character, including its design, appearance, and personality. Trademark protects the names, logos, and brand identifiers a company uses to sell goods. When you draw a recognizable character and sell that drawing, you're reproducing copyrighted expression and often invoking a trademarked name, which is what gives rights holders grounds to object.

The reproduction doesn't have to be exact. Copyright covers derivative works, meaning new creations based on existing protected material. A wholly original pose, your own art style, and added background details still produce a derivative work if the character itself remains recognizable. That recognizability is precisely what makes the art sell, and it's also what creates the legal exposure.

People often point to fair use as a shield. It can apply, particularly when the work transforms the original through commentary, criticism, or parody. But fair use is a defense argued case by case, weighing the purpose of the use, how much was borrowed, and the effect on the market for the original. Selling straightforward prints of a character for decorative purposes rarely qualifies, because it competes with the merchandise the rights holder already sells.

The Legitimate Ways to Sell

Plenty of artists earn money from fan-inspired work without crossing the line. The approaches that hold up tend to fall into a handful of categories:

• Licensing agreements, where you obtain written permission from the rights holder to produce and sell specific items, sometimes in exchange for royalties

• Official fan art programs, which companies like some game studios and anime distributors run with published guidelines on what artists may sell and where

• Transformative works that genuinely comment on or parody the source rather than simply reproducing it

• Original characters inspired by a genre or aesthetic rather than copying any specific protected character

Conventions occupy a murky middle ground. Many events have tolerated artist alley sales for years, and some rights holders quietly ignore small-scale work. That tolerance is not permission, and it can evaporate the moment your sales grow large enough to notice. Building a business on unenforced tolerance means building on sand.

Reducing Your Risk

If you're going to work in this space, a few practices meaningfully lower your exposure. Read the fan content policies that major franchises publish, because companies like Nintendo, Disney, and others spell out what they will and won't permit. Some allow noncommercial sharing while forbidding sales entirely; others run formal channels you can apply to.

Keep your commercial use narrow and your volume modest if you lack a license. Selling a handful of original-interpretation pieces at a local show carries different practical risk than mass-producing merchandise on a print-on-demand storefront that scales worldwide. Avoid using the franchise's trademarked names and logos in your shop title, product listings, and marketing, since trademark claims often arrive faster than copyright ones and focus on how you advertise.

Most importantly, invest in your own original work alongside any fan pieces. Characters and worlds you create belong to you outright, generate no licensing risk, and build equity in a brand no one can send a takedown notice over.

When You Receive a Notice

A DMCA takedown removing your listing is a request to stop, not a judgment of guilt, though ignoring repeated notices can cost you a platform account. A cease and desist letter signals the rights holder is paying closer attention. Neither should be ignored, and neither should send you into panic. Some demands are valid; others overreach. Before you respond or assume the worst, understanding which category a claim falls into protects you from both unnecessary surrender and unnecessary risk.

Building a Business That Lasts

Learning how to sell fan art legally comes down to respecting that the characters you love belong to someone else, then finding the routes that let you create within those boundaries. Licensing, official programs, genuinely transformative work, and your own original creations all offer ways to earn without gambling your livelihood on a rights holder's patience. The artists who thrive long term treat the legal side as part of the craft rather than an afterthought. If you're unsure whether your work crosses a line, or you've received a notice and need to understand your options, the intellectual property attorneys at Braslow Legal can help you protect both your art and your income.

Branding Disputes: How to Protect Your Business and Resolve Conflicts

Most branding disputes don't start with a lawsuit. They start with a letter, a confused customer, or a founder discovering that another company three states over is selling under a name that looks suspiciously like theirs. By the time the matter feels urgent, options have often narrowed. The clients who come to Braslow Legal with branding disputes tend to fall into two camps: those defending a name they've spent years building, and those who just received a demand and aren't sure whether to fight or fold.

Knowing how these conflicts arise, and what actually resolves them, puts you in a far stronger position whether you're the one raising the issue or the one being accused.

What Counts as a Branding Dispute

A branding dispute is any conflict over the words, logos, packaging, or overall identity a business uses to distinguish itself. Trademark law sits at the center of most of these fights. The core question is usually whether one party's mark is likely to confuse consumers about the source of a product or service.

That confusion analysis is more nuanced than people expect. Courts weigh how similar the marks look and sound, how related the goods or services are, the strength of the original mark, the channels through which each business sells, and any evidence that real customers have actually been confused. Two companies can share an identical name without a problem if they operate in genuinely different markets, which is why a software firm and a landscaping company might both use the same word without ever colliding.

Disputes also surface over trade dress (the look and feel of packaging or a storefront), domain names, social media handles, and slogans that one business considers its own.

Where These Conflicts Come From

A surprising number of branding problems trace back to skipped homework. A founder picks a name they love, builds a website, prints business cards, and never runs a clearance search to see whether someone else already holds rights to it. Common origins include:

• Two businesses independently adopting similar names, then growing into each other's territory

• A company expanding into a new region or product line where another brand already operates

• A former partner, franchisee, or contractor continuing to use a name after the relationship ends

• Bad-faith actors registering domains or marks that mirror an established brand

The earlier you catch one of these, the cheaper it is to fix. A name conflict spotted before launch is an inconvenience. The same conflict discovered after five years of investment is a crisis.

Protecting Your Brand Before Trouble Starts

The strongest position in any branding dispute belongs to the party that did the groundwork. Federal registration with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office gives you nationwide priority, a public record of your claim, and the ability to bring an infringement action in federal court. Common law rights exist the moment you use a mark in commerce, but they're limited to your actual geographic footprint and far harder to enforce.

A few practical steps make a real difference:

• Run a thorough clearance search before committing to a name, covering federal and state registrations plus common law uses

• Register your core marks rather than assuming use alone will protect you

• Secure matching domains and social handles early

• Use your marks consistently and keep records of when and where you first used them

• Monitor for newcomers using confusingly similar marks, since rights can erode if you let infringement slide

Putting brand ownership in writing matters too. When you hire a designer to create a logo, the copyright in that design may belong to the designer unless your contract assigns it to you. The same applies to agency relationships and contractor work.

Resolving a Dispute Once It Surfaces

Litigation is rarely the first move and often not the last either. Most branding disputes resolve through channels that cost far less than a courtroom.

A cease and desist letter opens the conversation, putting the other party on notice and frequently prompting a negotiated fix. From there, settlement often takes the form of a coexistence agreement, where both businesses agree to limits on how, where, or in what categories they'll use their respective marks. These arrangements let two parties move forward without either having to abandon its identity entirely.

When a registered mark is involved, proceedings before the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board can resolve oppositions and cancellations without full federal litigation. Mediation is another route that keeps control in the parties' hands rather than a judge's.

If you're on the receiving end of a demand, resist the urge to either panic or ignore it. Some claims are solid; others are overreaching attempts to scare off legitimate competition. Sorting out which is which, before you respond, shapes everything that follows.

Moving Forward With Confidence

Branding disputes reward preparation and punish delay. The businesses that weather them best are the ones that registered early, watched the landscape, and documented their rights, so that when a conflict arrives they're negotiating from strength rather than scrambling. Whether you're protecting a name you've built or responding to a claim against you, the path forward is clearer with experienced counsel reading the situation. The trademark and business attorneys at Braslow Legal can help you assess your rights, weigh your options, and resolve the matter before it drains your time and resources.

Are Social Media Posts Copyrighted? What You Need to Know

The short answer is yes. The moment you write a caption, snap a photo, or record a video and post it, copyright protection attaches automatically. You don't need to register anything or add a copyright symbol for the law to recognize you as the owner. This surprises a lot of people, and it's exactly the kind of question the team at Braslow Legal fields from creators, brands, and business owners who post content every day without thinking twice about who actually owns it.

Understanding how copyright works online matters more than it used to. A single viral post can carry real commercial value, and disputes over reposting, screenshots, and reused content have become common enough that they reach courtrooms.

What Copyright Actually Protects on Social Media

Copyright covers original works of authorship fixed in a tangible medium. On a platform, that means your photos, illustrations, written posts of meaningful length, videos, and audio recordings. The protection covers the creative expression, not the underlying idea. You can copyright a specific photo of a sunset over Tampa Bay, but you can't stop anyone else from photographing the same view.

Some content falls short of the threshold. A two-word caption or a common phrase generally lacks the originality copyright requires. A thoughtfully written paragraph, a designed graphic, or a produced video clearly qualifies. The dividing line tends to be whether the work reflects a minimal degree of creative choice.

Facts and short slogans sit outside copyright protection, though slogans may be eligible for trademark protection instead, which is a separate area of law worth knowing if your brand has a tagline it relies on.

You Own It, But the Platform Has a License

Here's where people get tripped up. When you accept a platform's terms of service, you grant that company a broad license to use your content. Instagram, TikTok, X, and the others all include language giving them a worldwide, royalty-free license to host, display, distribute, and sometimes sublicense what you post.

That license does not transfer ownership. You still hold the copyright. What you've done is give the platform permission to operate normally, showing your post to followers, including it in feeds, and letting others share it through the platform's built-in tools. The license usually ends or narrows once you delete the content, though copies others have already shared may persist.

The practical lesson: read the terms before you build a business on someone else's platform, and keep original files of anything valuable so you can prove authorship and use it elsewhere.

Reposting, Screenshots, and the Reality of Enforcement

Sharing someone else's post using the platform's native repost or retweet function is generally fine, because the terms of service contemplate exactly that. Saving a photo and re-uploading it as your own, or pulling an image into a marketing campaign, is a different matter. That's reproduction, and it can constitute infringement.

This comes up constantly in a few situations:

• A brand reposts a customer's photo without permission and treats it as advertising

• Someone screenshots an artist's work and sells it on merchandise

• A competitor lifts written content or product photography wholesale

Fair use sometimes applies, particularly for commentary, criticism, news reporting, or parody. It is a defense decided case by case, weighing the purpose of the use, the nature of the work, how much was taken, and the effect on the market for the original. Relying on fair use without understanding those factors is risky, and the outcome is rarely as predictable as people assume.

How Creators and Businesses Protect Themselves

Registration with the U.S. Copyright Office is optional but powerful. Your copyright exists without it, yet registration is a prerequisite to filing an infringement lawsuit, and registering before infringement occurs (or within three months of publication) opens the door to statutory damages and attorney's fees. That changes the economics of enforcement dramatically.

A few habits go a long way. Keep dated original files. Watermark high-value images where it makes sense. Spell out ownership in contracts when you hire photographers, designers, or contractors, because without a written work-for-hire or assignment, the creator may retain the copyright even though you paid for the work. When you want to use someone else's content, ask for written permission rather than assuming a credit line is enough.

If your work is being used without authorization, platforms offer DMCA takedown processes that can remove infringing material quickly. For ongoing or commercial misuse, a cease and desist letter or formal claim may be warranted.

The Bottom Line

So, are social media posts copyrighted? Yes, your original posts belong to you from the moment you create them, even as the platform holds a license to display them and others can share them through normal features. The friction starts when content gets copied, repurposed, or monetized without consent. Whether you're protecting your own work or making sure your brand isn't borrowing someone else's, getting the details right protects both your rights and your reputation. If you have questions about ownership, licensing, or an infringement issue, the intellectual property attorneys at Braslow Legal can help you sort it out before it becomes a costly problem.

How to Register Your Best Content with the Copyright Office: A Braslow Legal Guide for Florida Creators

Copyright exists the moment you create something original and fix it in a tangible form. That part is automatic. What is not automatic, and what most creators learn the hard way, is the difference between owning a copyright and being able to enforce it. At Braslow Legal, Florida photographers, writers, course creators, agency owners, and influencers regularly ask the same question after their work shows up somewhere it should not be: do I need to have registered this to do anything about it? The short answer is yes, if you want the law on your side.

Registration is the step that turns a copyright from a claim into a tool.

What Registration Actually Gets You

The Copyright Act gives registered works a different set of remedies than unregistered ones. Under Section 411 of Title 17 of the U.S. Code, you generally cannot file a copyright infringement lawsuit in federal court until the Copyright Office has acted on your application. The Supreme Court confirmed this rule in Fourth Estate Public Benefit Corp. v. Wall-Street.com (2019), holding that registration must be complete, not just filed, before suit.

Timing also controls what you can recover. If the work is registered before the infringement happens, or within three months of first publication, the law allows you to seek statutory damages and attorney's fees. Without timely registration, you are limited to actual damages and the infringer's profits, which are often hard to prove and rarely worth the cost of a lawsuit.

That difference is the entire game. Statutory damages can run up to 150,000 dollars per work for willful infringement. Attorney's fees can make a case economically viable. Neither is available if registration came too late.

What Counts as Your Best Content

Most creators produce more material than is practical to register one piece at a time. The goal is to identify the works carrying the most commercial value and the highest risk of being copied.

Examples that usually justify individual registration:

• Photography and video shoots tied to product launches or campaigns

• Signature blog posts, ebooks, lead magnets, and white papers

• Online courses, paid newsletters, and membership content

• Music tracks, scripts, and long-form video projects

• Source code and original software documentation

The honest test is whether you would feel the loss if a competitor copied it. If the answer is yes, that work belongs in a registration plan.

Group Registration: The Underused Tool

The Copyright Office offers several group registration options that let creators register many works in a single application for a single fee. For most social media and content businesses, this is where the real value is.

Group registration is available for:

• Photographs, with up to 750 photos per application

• Short online literary works such as blog posts, with up to 50 works per application

• Serials and newsletters issued at set intervals

• Unpublished works of the same type, with up to 10 works per application

A Florida photographer who shoots three hundred images a month is not going to register each one. A quarterly group registration covering an entire shoot library is realistic and keeps the timing window for statutory damages open.

How the Filing Actually Works

Registration is handled through the Copyright Office's online portal at copyright.gov, using the eCO system. The process has three parts: completing the application, paying the filing fee, and submitting a copy of the work as a deposit. Fees range from around 45 dollars for a single work by a single author to higher amounts for standard and group applications.

Processing times vary. Standard online applications often take several months. The Office offers special handling for an additional fee when litigation is imminent, which can compress that timeline significantly.

The application asks who created the work, when it was created, whether it has been published, and who currently owns the copyright. Accuracy matters. A registration certificate issued with material errors can be challenged later by an infringer arguing that the registration is invalid.

Florida-Specific Considerations

Copyright is exclusively federal, so registration happens through the U.S. Copyright Office regardless of where you live. Florida law enters the picture in two ways that matter for enforcement.

Florida is home to the U.S. District Court for the Southern, Middle, and Northern Districts, which is where most infringement suits by Florida creators are filed. Those courts apply Eleventh Circuit precedent on damages, fair use, and willfulness, and they have a substantial body of case law on online infringement. Florida law also governs contract questions tied to ownership, work-for-hire clauses, and assignments, which often surface in registration disputes when more than one person claims to be the author.

A registration filed in the wrong name, or filed by a business that does not actually own the work under a Florida agreement, can collapse a case before it starts.

How Braslow Legal Approaches Registration Strategy

Registration is not a paperwork exercise. The team at Braslow Legal helps Florida creators and businesses build registration calendars that protect the work most likely to be infringed, file group applications when they save money without losing coverage, and structure ownership records so the certificate holds up if it ever gets tested. Registration paired with clear assignment paperwork is what makes a copyright actually defensible.

Your best content is an asset. Treating it like one starts with a registration plan, not a regret after the fact.

Copyright Ownership for Influencers Working with Brands: A Braslow Legal Guide

Most influencer deals fall apart in the same place. Not the rate, not the deliverables, not the posting schedule. The fight is almost always about who owns the content after it goes live. At Braslow Legal, creators and brands across Florida regularly come in after a campaign has already wrapped, asking whether a sponsor can keep running their photos in ads two years later, or whether a creator can repost their own work to a new client. The answer lives in a clause most people skim before signing.

Copyright ownership in brand deals is not complicated once you know what to look for. The trouble is that most contracts are written to make ownership easy to miss.

Who Owns the Content by Default

Under federal copyright law, the person who creates an original work owns the copyright the moment it is fixed in a tangible form. For an influencer, that means the photo, video, caption, or edit is yours from the second you take it or write it. No registration is required for ownership to exist. Registration matters for enforcement, but the underlying right attaches automatically.

A brand paying you to create content does not change that default rule on its own. The transfer of ownership only happens if the contract says so, and only if it says so the right way.

Work for Hire Is Not Automatic

Brands love the phrase "work for hire." It sounds like it solves the ownership question in one line. It usually does not.

Under the Copyright Act, a work made for hire only exists in two narrow situations. The first is content created by an employee within the scope of employment. Influencers are almost never employees of the brands paying them. The second is a specific category of commissioned works that the parties agree in writing will be treated as works for hire. That list is short and largely tied to traditional media formats like motion pictures, translations, and contributions to collective works. A standalone Instagram Reel does not fit neatly into any of those categories.

When a contract says the content is a work for hire but the legal requirements are not met, courts will often look at whether the agreement also includes an assignment of rights as a backup. If it does not, the creator may still own the copyright even after the campaign airs.

Assignment vs. License: The Distinction Every Creator Should Read For

Two clauses can sit one line apart in a contract and mean opposite things.

An assignment transfers ownership of the copyright from the creator to the brand. After an assignment, the creator no longer owns the work and generally cannot use it without permission from the new owner.

A license keeps ownership with the creator and grants the brand permission to use the content under specific terms. A well-drafted license should spell out scope, duration, territory, exclusivity, and the specific media where the brand can use the work.

A creator who assigns a campaign photo to a brand cannot put that photo in their portfolio next year without asking. A creator who licenses the same photo for one year of paid social use can do whatever they want with it after the term ends.

Words to watch for in contracts:

• "All rights, title, and interest" usually signals a full assignment

• "Perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free" signals a license that functions almost like an assignment

• "Limited license for the purpose of" usually signals a narrower grant

What Florida Law Adds to the Picture

Copyright is federal, so the Copyright Act controls ownership questions across the country. Florida adds a layer that affects how these disputes get resolved. Florida law governs contract interpretation when an influencer agreement is signed in the state or names Florida as the venue, and Florida courts have shown a willingness to enforce clear written terms even when one party later regrets the deal. That cuts both ways. A creator who signs an aggressive assignment in Florida will usually be held to it. A brand that drafts a vague license clause will not get the benefit of the doubt later.

Florida also recognizes a right of publicity that runs alongside copyright. A creator's face, name, and likeness are protected separately from the underlying photo or video. A brand might own the copyright in a finished video and still need permission to keep using the creator's image in new advertising.

Usage Rights That Often Get Buried

Beyond the assignment-versus-license question, several terms decide what the deal actually allows.

• Term: how long the brand can use the content

• Territory: where the brand can use it

• Media: paid social, organic social, website, email, out-of-home, broadcast, retail

• Exclusivity: whether the creator can work with competitors during the term

• Whitelisting and dark posts: whether the brand can run the content as ads from the creator's own handle

A six-month organic Instagram license is a very different deal from a perpetual worldwide paid media license. The price should reflect that, and often does not because no one read the clause carefully.

How Braslow Legal Helps Creators and Brands Get Ownership Right

Most ownership disputes are preventable at the contract stage. The team at Braslow Legal works with Florida creators and the brands that hire them to draft, review, and negotiate influencer agreements that say what the parties actually mean. That includes auditing existing contract templates, building license structures that protect long-term value, and pursuing or defending claims when usage goes beyond what was agreed.

The content you create is the asset. Who owns it after a brand deal is a decision worth making on purpose, before a campaign is in market and before money has changed hands.

Trade Dress vs. Trademark vs. Design Patent: A Braslow Legal Guide for Florida Businesses

Three different tools, three different timelines, three different sets of rules. When a client walks into Braslow Legal with a new product, a new logo, or a new shape they want to keep out of competitors' hands, the first job is figuring out which form of intellectual property protection actually applies. The terms get used interchangeably in marketing materials and on social media, but in the law they cover very different ground.

Picking the wrong one wastes filing fees, leaves real assets exposed, and sometimes blocks future protection that would otherwise have been available.

What Each One Actually Covers

A trademark is a word, name, slogan, logo, or other source identifier. It tells consumers that a product or service comes from a particular business. The Coca-Cola script, the name itself, the Just Do It tagline, the Target bullseye. Trademark rights come from use in commerce and can be strengthened through federal registration with the USPTO.

Trade dress protects the overall look and feel of a product or its packaging when that appearance functions as a source identifier. The shape of a Coca-Cola bottle, the décor of a Two Pesos taco restaurant, the bright pink color of Owens Corning insulation. Trade dress sits under the same Lanham Act framework as trademarks, but the proof requirements are stricter, particularly when product design is involved.

A design patent protects the ornamental, non-functional appearance of a manufactured item. The fluted edge of an iPhone or the silhouette of a Crocs shoe would qualify. Design patents are issued by the USPTO through a different application process and live in patent law, not trademark law.

The same product can be covered by all three at once. The Coca-Cola bottle is a famous example. It carries a trademark in the name, trade dress in the contour shape, and once held a design patent on that shape before the patent expired.

How Long Protection Lasts

Duration is where the practical differences hit hardest.

• Trademark rights can last indefinitely, so long as the mark stays in use and renewal filings are made every ten years

• Trade dress can also last indefinitely if the look continues to function as a source identifier and secondary meaning is maintained

• Design patents expire fifteen years after issuance and cannot be renewed

That fifteen-year cap matters. A founder who relies only on a design patent for the shape of a signature product will see that protection vanish, and competitors are usually ready when it does. Building trade dress alongside the patent, by advertising the shape itself and documenting consumer recognition, can extend protection well past the patent's expiration.

The Florida Angle

Florida businesses operate under both federal law and Florida state law on these issues. Florida Statutes section 495 governs state trademark registration and follows the federal framework closely. Florida common law also recognizes unfair competition claims that often run parallel to federal trade dress disputes. Design patents, by contrast, are exclusively federal. There is no state-level design patent in Florida or anywhere else.

For a Tampa product designer or an Orlando consumer brand, this means trademark and trade dress strategy can use state and federal layers, while design patent protection requires going straight to the USPTO.

When Each Tool Actually Fits

The right choice depends on what is being protected and how the market is likely to behave.

A trademark is the answer when a name, logo, or slogan needs protection. It is the cheapest, fastest, and most durable form of brand protection available.

Trade dress fits when the appearance of the product, the packaging, or the retail environment is doing the recognition work. It is harder to register and enforce, but it covers things a trademark cannot reach.

A design patent is worth pursuing when a product's ornamental design is new and original but not yet associated with the brand in the public's mind. Patents do not require secondary meaning, which makes them attractive at launch. They also pair well with trade dress as a backstop strategy: get the design patent now, build secondary meaning over the next fifteen years, then rely on trade dress when the patent expires.

How Braslow Legal Approaches the Three-Way Decision

The choice is rarely either-or. For most clients, the question is which combination makes sense and in what order to file. A design patent application filed before public disclosure preserves rights that would otherwise be lost. An early trademark registration creates a record that supports later trade dress arguments. Documentation of how a product looks and how it is marketed lays the foundation for any future enforcement.

The team at Braslow Legal helps Florida businesses map their intellectual property across all three categories before competitors force the issue. A brand audit at the right moment can mean the difference between a clean enforcement action and a hard lesson about what was never protected in the first place.

Knowing which tool fits which asset is what turns a logo, a shape, or a package into a defensible business asset. If you are launching a product or have one already in the market without a clear protection plan, now is the time to map it out.