In a strange move Microsoft has added a plug-in for Microsoft Word, Excel and Power Point applications that allows you to embed Creative Commons license allowing authors to express their intent on how others may use their work.
Found under the file menu it has a short wizard that allows you to embed a variety of Creative Commons licenses into the document, and while bloggers will relish this plug-in, it would be nice to see a similar thing for formal copyright notices too.
One also has to wonder how far we are away from embedding similar data into images.
More can be found on types of Creative Commons licenses here.