In order to fulfill copyright requirements, a signed IEEE copyright form must be submitted with each paper. Provide a copy of the IEEE copyright form to each author with the publication title and the publication date already filled in. An example title is ``Proceedings International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing.'' It is very important that the date you fill in be correct. For some reason, corporate lawyers always wait until the day before the copyright date to file for patents. Patents must be filed before the information becomes public. If we release proceedings before the copyright date, then we may cause some corporations to lose some patents. This is not likely to endear them to the idea of allowing their employees to submit future work.
The official copyright date must be stated to the authors in their acceptance letter, with the letter accompanying the author's kit, and on the IEEE copyright form. It should also appear on the Call-for-Papers. The official date must be before the first copy of the proceedings is given or sent to a registrant. Use the day before the first day of the meeting if the proceedings are given out on site. Specify one month before the first day if the proceedings will be mailed in advance. After you publish the date, you must stick to it.