A Copyright object contains a Header paragraph and a list of additional Files or License paragraphs. It provides methods to iterate over those paragraphs, in addition to adding new ones. It also provides a mechanism for finding the Files paragraph (if any) that matches a particular filename. Typical usage:: with io.open('debian/copyright', 'rt', encoding='utf-8') as f: c = copyright.Copyright(f) header = c.header # Header exposes standard fields, e.g. print('Upstream name: ', header.upstream_name) lic = header.license if lic: print('Overall license: ', lic.synopsis) # You can also retrive and set custom fields. header['My-Special-Field'] = 'Very special' # Find the license for a given file. paragraph = c.find_files_paragraph('debian/rules') if paragraph: print('License for debian/rules: ', paragraph.license) # Dump the result, including changes, to another file. with io.open('debian/copyright.new', 'wt', encoding='utf-8') as f: c.dump(f=f) It is possible to build up a Copyright from scratch, by modifying the header and using add_files_paragraph and add_license_paragraph. See the associated method docstrings. Nú