In order to use Copyright rule the user has to deal with three fields

1. Include Packages:

For this field, the user has to use comma-separated package specifications to determine classes where this copyright applies.
(e.g. com.ibm.package1,com.ibm.package2).This field also supports wild card (e.g. com.ibm.package1.*,com.ibm.package2.*).
But "com.ibm.package1" and "com.ibm.package1.*" will have different meanings. If user wants to use his copyright comment only on one
class he is going to use "com.ibm.package1". But if wants to use it for all the classes that start with "com.ibm.package1" he will
use "com.ibm.package1.*"

Providing a value is not mandatory for this field.If no value is specified the rule is going to run for all packages

2. Exclude Packages:

The properties of this field is same as "Include Packages" field. But the user will use this field to specify
the packages on which he does not want his rule to run.

Providing a value is not mandatory for this field.If no value is specified the rule is going to run for all packages

3. Copyright Comment:

The use has to enter a valid Java comment block containing the desired copyright notice.

The user can use [date] where he expects the copyright date to appear. For example-


/**********************************************************************
* Copyright (c) [date] IBM Corporation and others.
* All rights reserved. This program and the accompanying materials
* are made available under the terms of the Eclipse Public License v1.0
* which accompanies this distribution, and is available at
* http://www.eclipse.org/legal/epl-v10.html
* $Id: Copyright_Help.html,v 1.1 2008/02/29 15:07:43 linda_hillis Exp $
*
* Contributors:
* IBM - Initial API and implementation
**********************************************************************/

If there was no Copyright comment on the file and the current year is 2007,after quickfix the Copyright comment will look like following-


/**********************************************************************
* Copyright (c) 2007 IBM Corporation and others.
* All rights reserved. This program and the accompanying materials
* are made available under the terms of the Eclipse Public License v1.0
* which accompanies this distribution, and is available at
* http://www.eclipse.org/legal/epl-v10.html
* $Id: Copyright_Help.html,v 1.1 2008/02/29 15:07:43 linda_hillis Exp $
*
* Contributors:
* IBM - Initial API and implementation
**********************************************************************/

If the file had a Copyright comment like the following
/**********************************************************************
* Copyright (c) 2005 IBM Corporation and others.
* All rights reserved. This program and the accompanying materials
* are made available under the terms of the Eclipse Public License v1.0
* which accompanies this distribution, and is available at
* http://www.eclipse.org/legal/epl-v10.html
* $Id: Copyright_Help.html,v 1.1 2008/02/29 15:07:43 linda_hillis Exp $
*
* Contributors:
* IBM - Initial API and implementation
**********************************************************************/

But the last modified date of this file was in 2006 and the current year is 2006. After quickfix the comment is going to look like following
/**********************************************************************
* Copyright (c) 2005,2006 IBM Corporation and others.
* All rights reserved. This program and the accompanying materials
* are made available under the terms of the Eclipse Public License v1.0
* which accompanies this distribution, and is available at
* http://www.eclipse.org/legal/epl-v10.html
* $Id: Copyright_Help.html,v 1.1 2008/02/29 15:07:43 linda_hillis Exp $
*
* Contributors:
* IBM - Initial API and implementation
**********************************************************************/

But if current year is 2007 and the last modified year was 2006 after quickfix the file is going to look like following -
/**********************************************************************
* Copyright (c) 2005,2007 IBM Corporation and others.
* All rights reserved. This program and the accompanying materials
* are made available under the terms of the Eclipse Public License v1.0
* which accompanies this distribution, and is available at
* http://www.eclipse.org/legal/epl-v10.html
* $Id: Copyright_Help.html,v 1.1 2008/02/29 15:07:43 linda_hillis Exp $
*
* Contributors:
* IBM - Initial API and implementation
**********************************************************************/

If the user wants to ignore comparing any line, he has to use [ignore] on that line. But the [ignore] tag has to be the only thing typed in that line
(not even spaces are allowed before or after the [ignore] tag).For example-


/**********************************************************************
* Copyright (c) [date] IBM Corporation and others.
* All rights reserved. This program and the accompanying materials
* are made available under the terms of the Eclipse Public License v1.0
* which accompanies this distribution, and is available at
* http://www.eclipse.org/legal/epl-v10.html
[ignore]
*
* Contributors:
* IBM - Initial API and implementation
**********************************************************************/

But the quickfix will get that line from the copyright comment in the file and replace the [ignore] with that.
If there is no copyright comment in the file the quickfix will delete the line with [ignore]

Without [date] and [ignore] tag the rule is going to compare everything that is passed on as the parameter.
But in that case the copyright year has to be typed in. For example -


/**********************************************************************
* Copyright (c) 2007 IBM Corporation and others.
* All rights reserved. This program and the accompanying materials
* are made available under the terms of the Eclipse Public License v1.0
* which accompanies this distribution, and is available at
* http://www.eclipse.org/legal/epl-v10.html
* $Id: Copyright_Help.html,v 1.1 2008/02/29 15:07:43 linda_hillis Exp $
*
* Contributors:
* IBM - Initial API and implementation
**********************************************************************/