Copyright is a noun meaning an author’s exclusive legal right to his or her work. A copyrighter is a person who secures copyrights. Other forms include copyrighting, copyrights, copyrighted, and copyrightable.
Copywrite is not a dictionary-recognized word. Copywriter—meaning a writer of copy, especially in advertising—is a word. So is the noun copywriting, meaning the work of a copywriter. The verb copywrite never caught on, perhaps due to the potential for confusion with copyright.
Examples
In 1998, in a controversial piece of legislation, Congress extended the length of copyright protection in the United States by 20 years … [New York Times]
I was a copywriter at the time, trying to write an article for a client, a stationery company. [Independent]
Otherwise, why else would they bother to go through the expensive copyrighting process? [Australian]
The description of a film’s protagonist as a “quirky outsider” in the copywriting on the back cover of a Blu-ray does not inspire much confidence. [DVD Talk]
