Attached Link: http://www.patents.com/copyrigh.htm

As was said, your stuff is automatically copyrighted when you affix your copyright notice to it. But as was also mentioned, that does not effectively stop anyone else from grabbing it. You could pursue the issue through the courts and you may even win your case using this copyright procedure and they will even stop the other person from using it in the future, but chances are you will not be entitled to any financial settlements on your work that may have been gotten from the use of it. And you couldn't sue for legal expenses as a result. In order for you to be compensated for monetary gains on your work and to be able to counter sue for legal expenses you would need to copyright your work through the U.S. Copyright Office by filling out the required forms and a small fee (use to be like $25 U.S.D. but may now be more)and registering your work with them. They require something like two perfect copies of your work.