The "copyright" question came up after my Adobe Acrobat session at AALL. How do you keep people from distributing the PDF to everyone and their brother, possibly violating copyright law? After all, the same copyright issues apply to the electronic version as apply to the hard copy research results.
Many libraries use a rubber stamp for photocopied articles that says: "This material may be protected by copyright law (Title 17 U.S. Code)." (See "Copyright & Fair Use - Library Photocopying" from Stanford University.) You can do the same thing for your PDF file in Adobe Acrobat 6.0 using the stamp tool.
There are several standard stamps offered, such as DRAFT. Of course, the copyright notice is not a ready-made stamp, so you'll need to create a custom stamp. To do that, use your favorite image-editing program to create a graphic with the text that you'd like to use. The size should be about 2 inches by 1 1/2 inch. Then, in Acrobat 6.0, choose Tools - Commenting - Stamps - Create Custom Stamp, and follow the prompts. For more detailed instructions , see the Adobe Acrobat Help file. (The instructions vary for 5.0. You'll need to create the custom stamp as a PDF file. See page 133 of the manual for more information.)
Thanks to Shawn Swearingen from Faegre & Benson LLP for asking the question and getting me started thinking about using the stamp tool for the copyright notice.
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