Your company's first bug of 2009

I bet I can guess a bug at your company. You may not even know it. Nor your customers, or your marketing department.

It's probably in your code. It might be on your website. It is probably completely innocuous until you need it most, and then, well, your legal staff will tell you all about it.

If you haven't guessed yet, it's your copyright text. Most likely, it says something like:

ABC Company copyright 2002-2008. All rights reserved.

or even possibly "... (c) 2002-2004" if it is in code.

What does this mean? Does it really matter?

Good question. The facile answer is that if it was important enough to merit a copyright notice from 2002 to 2004, then it is probably important enough to update now. A more sophisticated question is if there is any legal standing for the years after a copyright notice. To be honest, I don't know.

All I know is that one team lead (who I respect) once speculated that omitting a copyright notice on new code was grounds for dismissal. I thought that was crazy then, and I do now: but it underscores the importance of this legal business. (As an aside, it just looks plain bad when the year is off on a website.)

I invite clarifications on the ramifications of letting copyrights 'expire' (if that is the correct term), but for now the takeaway is: update the darn year, and give your lawyers some backup support.