There is a difference between a copyright and a license. Copyright means you own a work. That work could be music, a picture, a piece of software, a novel. There is a difference between copyright and patent - which is way-beyond this page (if you want to know about that stuff, go to law school *grin*). If you are a composer that wrote an original work, then you are a copyright owner and you own that work. However, you can license that work for use (and there are different types of licenses). You as a composer might say, "I give you permission to perform my work three times in the course of a year" or "I give you license to perform my work as much as you like as long as you are not making money (like in a church service)" or "I give you permission to use, modify, perform, and do whatever as long as you give me credit as the originator of this work". These are all examples of licenses.

Usually a publisher buys a copyright from a composer and then the work is "owned" by the publisher. Publishers give very restrictive license-of-use to buyers of works - so restrictive, in fact, that a buyer couldn't even photocopy the pages that were bought (although lots of publishers now give copy permission for x number of copies because it saves them money. Or they will print-on-demand from a web interface).

If you'd like us to engrave a musical work for you, you will need to state that you have rights to all portions of a work (this includes words - if you didn't write the words then you need to have permission to use those words). If you are modifying someone else's work, you will need to state that you have permission to do so (a license) or it is in the public domain. If you'd like to list your work on our service for sale, you will need to state all the above, as well as license the work under one of the "Creative Commons" licenses from the website above (you can get started building your license here).