Rich, thanks a lot for taking the time to ask.
The final copyright that I put on the maps is: "Copyright - Jan Rychetnik. Jan Rychetnik grants permission to print this sheet for personal use."
You would be better off to put "Do not copy without permission".
Anyone who is honest will ask you first before copying, and some shops will actually read that warning and refuse photocopying attempts or reprints based on that. Not many, but some. Anyone who is not honest on the other hand is not going to care one way or the other.
"Copyright" is nothing more then a legal declaration that such and such was created by you. This paperwork can then be used officially in a court of litigation to sue for damages, of which there tend to be six common types (Compensatory and Speculative would be the two in this particular case). The law is so screwed up on this that you do not even have to submit a copy of what you are actually registering the copyright for. So any idiot (read - crook) can spend the money to register the paperwork and claim he invented the original Bible, which would then make all others derivative works, etc. It happens all the time in the software world, especially with patents on UI elements.
Simply put, most lawyers will tell you that if you are not going after more then 50K then you are wasting your time. You can worse case go through small claims court, but enforcement is dicey since most thieves are not local to your state or province and thus outside jurisdiction.
You should mark everything you do with Copyright warnings as a general rule, even if you are in countries like Canada where Copyright is assumed to belong to the creator of something the moment they create it.
Keep a paper trail of any dealings you have with printers or businesses around said work you create, and that will be useful as evidence submitted with any Discovery proceedings done as part of litigation work.
BTW most courts will not accept the old method of sending the original artwork or copies of the original works to yourself by registered mail. While the postal system is technically a legal notary, it is not accepted anymore in most courts I am aware of that deal with litigation. In small claims the judge may rule otherwise.
In the end it comes down to having a rich relative or lawyer in the family if you really want to hear honesty opinions on your options. No copyright will stop someone in non-signature countries that ignore international copyright laws. The only plus is that you might be able to get an injunction to prevent the crook from legally selling or distributing and stated derivative or your original work after he had it printed in that other country and imports the resulting product here for sale or distribution. This might work until legal decision is made by the court you have filed the lawsuit with, but even then crooks tend to find ways around it.
Google the whole "Bang game copyright decision" and you will see what I mean. Bang was openly pirated by a Chinese company, and that Chinese company won the court case unfortunately, which effects future legal decisions on outright game theft. These are the new realities.
When I was young and naive (no not last year) I made the mistake of distributing playtest material to playtesters that did not have my express "Do Not Copy" and "Copyright" declaration on it. Because of that I lost any real shot I had at going after one of my playtesters (who did have a rich daddy). He took my hard work and made millions of dollars off what he published. It was the very first game I created, and the blow I took from that nearly kept me out of game development forever. It is not a nice feeling to sit there and watch someone steal your hard work, much less make millions and get tons of positive press on it, when you know what they really did. Unless you have money there is almost zip you can do about it.
That is not to say your maps would get to that level, but weirder stories have happened in software game world where millions of dollars are commonly at stake, and simple ideas or innovations have changed an entire industry. It is why as a game developer you often have to deal with novel sized NDA and IP boilerplate agreements to work in that world. Look at what happened with Monopoly and some games like that where the actual creator was screwed and left penniless. It happens.
Will a copyright stop that from happening to you? Not in this day and age of enormous business arrogance that is everywhere. But a lawyer with litigation experience might disagree depending on how well you documented and covered your butt.
Good luck either way.
