Website Copyright Notice: Footer Examples, Which Year to Use, and Whose Name Goes In It

Key takeaways

• A copyright notice has three parts: the © symbol (or the word "Copyright"), a year, and the owner's name. The US Copyright Office's example is "© 2017 John Doe".
• It is optional. In the US it has been optional for works published on or after 1 March 1989. GOV.UK says marking your work or not does not affect the level of protection.
• It still helps. The US Copyright Office lists benefits, including that a notice may stop an infringer from claiming they did not know the work was protected.
• The year is the tricky part. The notice uses the year of first publication, and the Copyright Office says putting a work online does not always count as publishing it. Most sites use a launch year, a range, or the current year; each has trade-offs.
• The name must be the real owner. If an agency or freelancer built your site, check your contract. In the US, a commissioned website is usually not a "work made for hire", so ownership comes from a written transfer.
• "All rights reserved" is optional wording. The Copyright Office's own example notice does not include it.

The short answer

Put one line in your site footer: © [year] [legal owner's name]. For a business, use the legal business name, not the brand if they differ. For the year, use the year the site first went live, or a range from that year to the year of the last real update, such as © 2019-2026 Example Ltd. Adding "All rights reserved" is fine but not needed. Then check that the name in the notice actually owns the copyright, which, if someone else built the site, depends on your contract.

Who is writing: Amariq designs and builds websites. We are not lawyers. The legal points below come from US Copyright Office Circulars 3, 30 and 66 and GOV.UK's copyright guide, all read on 10 November 2026.

What ranks for this search, and what it leaves out

On 10 November 2026 the first page of Google (US, English) for "website copyright notice" showed TermsFeed's sample notices (20 May 2026), Termly (18 May 2026), Nolo (19 January 2023), a UC Berkeley IT page, Heimlich Law (21 January 2026), the US Copyright Office's Circular 66 on registering websites, a notice generator and a 2015 Law Stack Exchange thread on the footer year.

The Nolo result's summary says a website is published when it first launches. Circular 66 is more careful: it says posting a work online does not necessarily mean it has been published. No result we saw put that next to the practical question of which year to show. None covered the ownership question that matters when a studio or freelancer built the site, and none showed how to keep the year current on common website builders. This guide covers those three points. (The Nolo page asked for a bot check when we tried to open it, so we have only its search result summary.)

The three parts of a notice

The US Copyright Office's Circular 3, "Copyright Notice", says a notice has three elements, which generally appear as one continuous statement:

Its example is "© 2017 John Doe". The circular also says using a notice is the owner's responsibility and needs no permission from or registration with the Copyright Office.

Is a copyright notice required?

No, for anything you publish today.

• United States. Circular 3 says notice is optional for works published on or after 1 March 1989, for unpublished works and for foreign works. Before that date, leaving it off could cost the work its US protection.
• United Kingdom. GOV.UK says you get copyright automatically, without applying or paying, and that there is no copyright register in the UK. It lists web content among the works protected. It says you can mark your work with ©, your name and the year of creation, and that marking it or not does not affect the level of protection.

Why add one anyway

Circular 3 lists the benefits of a notice even when it is optional:

• It tells people that copyright is claimed.
• For a published work, it may stop a defendant from trying to reduce damages by claiming innocent infringement.
• It identifies the owner, so people know whom to ask for permission.
• It gives the year of first publication.
• It may stop the work from becoming an "orphan work" whose owner cannot be found.

UC Berkeley's IT page makes the same practical case: a notice clarifies ownership and encourages people who want to use the material to get in touch.

What it does not do: a notice does not stop anyone from copying, and it is not a registration. In the US, registration is a separate step with the Copyright Office.

Which year to put in the footer

This is the question most people actually have. The notice is meant to show the year of first publication. Circular 66, on registering websites, adds two facts that make "first publication" less obvious for a website:

• Posting a work online does not necessarily mean it is published. The Copyright Office treats a work as published when the owner authorises the public to keep copies, for example with a download button. Merely displaying a work online generally does not count.
• Most websites change often, and each new version of a website is generally treated as a separate work for registration.

So there is no single "correct" year for a living website. In practice, sites use one of four styles:

For most business sites, the range is the best fit: it keeps the launch year and shows that the content is maintained. UC Berkeley's own home page uses the current year ("Copyright © 2026 UC Regents; all rights reserved"), and the University of California Office of the President uses no year at all, so large organisations differ too.

If your work is valuable enough that the year could matter in a dispute, that is a question for a copyright lawyer, and a reason to look at registration.

Whose name goes in the notice

The notice should name the copyright owner. That sounds obvious until someone else built the site.

Circular 30, "Works Made for Hire", says a work is made for hire in two situations: when an employee creates it as part of their regular duties, or when a work of one of nine listed types is specially ordered or commissioned and both sides sign a written agreement saying it is a work made for hire. In that case the hiring party is both author and owner.

A website built by an outside studio or freelancer is not made by your employee, and a whole website is not obviously one of the nine listed types. So in the US the safer route to owning it is a written transfer (assignment) of copyright in your contract. Check yours for three things:

1. Who owns the design, copy, images and code once the project is paid for.
2. What the builder keeps, such as their own code libraries, templates or tools reused across projects.
3. Third-party material, such as stock photos, fonts and theme licences. You get a licence to use these, not the copyright, and the notice cannot claim them.

Also check that the name matches your legal entity. If your brand is "Bright Smiles" but the company is "BS Dental LLC", the owner is the company.

Agencies sometimes add a "Site by [studio]" credit next to the notice. That is a credit, not a claim of ownership, but it should be agreed with the client.

Footer examples you can copy

The UC copyright education site uses a similar mixed line: a © line, then a note that site text is available under a CC BY-NC license except where noted. If you choose a Creative Commons licence, use the licence's own name and link.

Keep the line short, readable and in the same place on every page. It belongs in the footer, which our website footer design guide covers along with the legal links that sit beside it.

Keeping the year up to date

If you use a range, the end year needs updating. Options by platform:

• Website builders (Webflow, Wix, Squarespace, Framer). The footer is usually a shared component or section, so editing the text once updates every page. Put a reminder in January, or when you publish new content.
• WordPress. Many themes have a footer text setting. Developers often print the current year from the server with PHP's date function.
• Static sites and custom builds. The year can be set when the site is built, or filled in by a short script in the browser. A script-filled year shows the visitor's current year even if nothing on the site changed, which is the "current year only" style above.

Whatever you choose, do it on purpose. An automatic year is not wrong, but it does not record when your content was first published.

Copyright notice, terms of use and DMCA: what goes where

How Amariq can help

When we build a site, the footer gets a correct notice in your legal name, set up so it is easy to update, beside your privacy and terms links. Our terms are simple: once the final payment is made, the design, copy and code belong to you, and your domain, hosting and analytics accounts sit in your name. Projects are priced from scope, never by the hour, with 40% to start, 30% at design approval and 30% before launch. We work on Webflow, Framer, WordPress, Shopify, Wix, Squarespace or a custom stack. See our web design service.

Frequently asked questions

How do I write a copyright notice for my website?

Use the symbol, the year and the owner's name, for example "© 2021-2026 Example Ltd". The US Copyright Office's own example is "© 2017 John Doe".

Do I need a copyright notice on my website?

No. In the US it has been optional for works published since 1 March 1989, and GOV.UK says marking work does not change the protection in the UK. It is still useful because it names the owner and may defeat an innocent infringement defence in the US.

Should the copyright year update every year?

Not necessarily. The notice is meant to show the year of first publication. Many business sites use a range from the launch year to the year of the last update.

Do I need to write "All rights reserved"?

No. The US Copyright Office's example notice does not include it. It does no harm if you like the wording.

Who owns my website if a designer built it?

It depends on your contract. In the US, a commissioned website is usually not a work made for hire, so ownership normally passes by a written assignment. Check the contract before naming yourself as owner.

Does a copyright notice protect my website's content?

It does not create protection. In the US and UK, copyright exists automatically once the work is created. The notice tells people who owns it.

Where should the copyright notice go?

In the footer, so it appears on every page in the same place.