The Importance Of Creating A Paper Trail
While you hopefully won't end up in court, creating a paper trail when submitting your work is critical when it comes to protecting your intellectual property, be it music, art, or something else all together.
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Before making a work public, it is often a smart idea to go ahead and file a copyright registration. In the event of infringement, having the work fixed in tangible medium is theoretically enough, but when you have to prove that the offending individual or group either had access to your work, or that there was substantial similarity between your product and theirs, having left behind a paper trail can help to give you the upper hand. This article on MusicThinkTank by Wallace Collins offers some advice on how it's done.
"…some of the bigger media corporations have a policy whereby they insist that before they will accept or review any submission you sign a document waiving any claims you might later have against them (although their position is they might already be working on a similar idea and do not want to be sued such agreements must still be approached with great caution as they tend to be ambiguous and overly broad in scope). I am not suggesting that you plan a lawsuit, just that you be prepared in case someone infringes your work."
