17 U.S.C. § 402 — Notice of copyright: Phonorecords of sound recordings

(a) General Provisions. When a sound recording protected under this title is published — in the U.S. or elsewhere — by the copyright owner's authority, the owner may place a copyright notice, as this section describes, on publicly distributed phonorecords^* of that recording.

(b) Form of Notice. If a notice appears on the phonorecords, it must include three things: (1) the ℗ symbol (the letter P in a circle); (2) the year the sound recording was first published; and (3) the copyright owner's name, a recognizable abbreviation of it, or another generally known way to identify the owner. If the producer's name appears on the phonorecord's label or container, and no other name appears with the notice, the producer's name counts as part of the notice.

(c) Position of Notice. The notice must be placed on the phonorecord's surface, or on its label or container, in a way and location that gives reasonable notice of the copyright claim.

(d) Evidentiary Weight of Notice. If a proper copyright notice appeared on the published phonorecord or phonorecords that a defendant in an infringement lawsuit had access to, the court gives no weight to that defendant's "innocent infringement" defense as a reason to reduce damages — except as allowed by the last sentence of section 504(c)(2).