Copyright protects your rights to your original work for your lifetime +70 years and is recognized in over 70 countries worldwide. If your work is not protected by copyright, it can be copied and used by anyone without your consent. Filing with the U.S. Copyright Office is the least expensive and best legal protection for your intellectual property. It not only creates a public record of your claim to copyright in a work at the Library of Congress, but a law suit alleging copyright infringement can not be filed in a U.S. court without it. For a work to be copyrighted, the material must be an "original work of authorship fixed in a tangible medium of expression." (The expression of the idea can be copyrighted but not the idea itself.) Literary, musical and dramatic works are included, as are software, web sites and graphics, among others.