Protect Your Ideas With Copyrights And Patents

Q: Can you tell me the difference between a copyright and a patent? Also is that something I should let a lawyer handle for me?

A: A wise man once said, "The biggest difference between a copyright and a patent is the number of lawyers it takes to do the paperwork." There is a point to be made there, mainly that if this wise man had paid his attorney to copyright that tidbit of wisdom I probably would have had to pay him five bucks to use the quote.

Copyrights, trademarks and patents are similar in that they are designed by law to protect your rights of ownership, but that's where the similarity ends. A copyright protects a creative work; a trademark protects a brand or company identity; and a patent protects an invention or process.

A copyright protects the rights of anyone who creates an "original work of authorship." A copyright owner has the exclusive right to reproduce the work; prepare spin-off works based on the copyrighted work; and to sell, perform and/or display the copyrighted work in public.

Copyright protection is afforded to eight categories of creative works: literary works (the written word); musical works (lyrics, music, melodies); dramatic works (plays, scripts, screenplays); artistic works (pictorial and sculptural), sound recordings (LPs, CDs, audio tapes); choreographic works (dance, pantomime); audiovisual works; and architectural works (blueprints, designs, renderings).

An original work is automatically copyrighted the moment it is put into a fixed format such as a paper copy or recording. In other words, once you put your original story in writing or make a recording of an original song, your copyright is automatically secured. From that moment on your work has copyright protection for your lifetime, plus 50 years after your death.

Registering a work with the U.S. Copyright Office is not required, but since it is relatively simple and inexpensive to do so, I advise that you register a copyright for each work you wish to protect. Also, your copyright must be registered in order to take legal action against someone who might infringe on the copyright in the future.

You can register a copyright without the assistance of an attorney. Simply visit the U.S. Copyright office website at http://lcweb.loc.gov/copyright/ and download the appropriate form. Complete the form and send it in with a $30 nonrefundable filing fee. This must be done for each individual work you wish to protect.

A patent is a form of protection granted to an inventor that protects his invention in the United States for up to 20 years from the date of application. Patent law states that, "whoever invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, composition of matter, or any new and useful improvements thereof may obtain a patent." Owning a patent gives you the legal right to stop someone else from making, using or selling your invention (or one that's very close to it) without your permission. However, proving that someone is infringing on your patent is often difficult and usually requires a trial to settle the dispute.

Since the first U.S. patent was awarded in 1790, more than five million patents have been awarded. The patent office receives more than 230,000 patent applications every year and I can tell you from personal experience that a turtle on Prozac moves faster than the patent process. Patents can take several years, truckloads of paperwork, and considerable legal fees to obtain. The cost of obtaining a patent can run from $500 for a simple design patent to $50,000 and more for a complex utility patent. However, if your company has a truly patentable idea, you would be wise to invest the time and money required to secure your rights. A good patent can be a valuable business asset.

While you can file a patent yourself, I strongly advise that you use an attorney since a naively written patent application often isn't worth the paper it's printed on. Just recently my attorney did a patent search for me only to discover that a patent for a similar product was already in place. However, due to the ineffectual language of the patent application, the patent was practically impossible for the owner to enforce.

Good news for me. Not so good news for the wise man who wrote his own patent.

Here's to your success!

Tim Knox Entrepreneur, Author, Speaker http://www.prosperityandprofit.com http://www.dropshipwholesale.net http://www.smallbusinessqa.com http://www.timknox.com

Short Guide to Patent Protection and Patentability

What can be protected?

Determining what qualifies as a patentable invention is a highly difficult and complicated task. Patent laws state that "Anything under the sun that was invented by man qualifies as patentable". Simple enough, but if you notice, there are hundreds of pages full of exceptions and details on the idea of patentability following this phrase. Scores of appeals and patent court cases have arisen due to questions regarding patentability because it still hasn't, and probably never will be entirely pinned down.

So, defining what is patentable is not as clear cut as black and white. Inventions can encompass a wide variety of areas, even living subject matter so long as the subject matter is the result of human intervention. An example of a patentable living organism is a microorganism or a plant which is produced or altered through genetic engineering. The key is that the living matter must be a product of "human ingenuity" and not merely a naturally occurring object, such as a shrimp with its digestive tract removed. The living matter must be altered to yield unique properties for it to be patentable.

However, the alteration can even be the mere fact that the living matter is simply isolated or purified. For example, unaltered pieces of DNA may be patentable provided they have been sequenced. The PTO has decided that the act of isolating and sequencing a strand of DNA is the result of human intervention. Currently, there is huge debate surrounding the patenting of biotechnology related "inventions" like DNA. Is a piece of DNA really an invention at all? Or what about a microorganism that happens to degrade oil? Is that an invention? Should it be?

As you are probably starting to see, the patent office has its work cut out for them as many of these questions are not black and white.

Lisa Parmley - Registered Patent Agent Review free articles on inventing and patenting: Patent Your Inventions

The Essence of the Patent Law

As a general rule, patents are associated with things and processes which are vital to the world the only exception though are innovative designs. Patents also allow the creator of some inventions to preclude others from making use of it commercially without the permission of the creator. It is possible to acquire patent on technologies used in arts. Nevertheless, the exceptions to the general rule are on product designs. It is thus theoretically potential to acquire design patent on the purely ornamental aspects of design while also having a copyright on same design.

Patents convey to the creator the right to exclude others from using or producing the formers creation for a limited time. A patent for an invention is an award of a property right to the inventor. It is given by the United States Patent and Trademark Office. A new patent may last up to 20 years from the date of application in the US. In special cases, it may start from the date of an earlier filed application. The application is subject to maintenance fees. It is also noteworthy to know that patent grants in US are only effective within US, its territories and possessions. If you want your patent grants to have extensions or adjustments, you can avail of the same under certain circumstances.

There are three types of patents. They are: a) Utility patents which may be granted to anyone who invents or discovers a machine, vital process, composition of matter, article of manufacture or any useful improvement thereof; b) Design patents may be granted to anyone who creates a new, original and ornamental design for an article of manufacture; lastly c) Plant patents may also be granted to anyone who creates or discovers at the same time asexually reproduce any distinct and new variety of plant.

What is vested by the patent is not the right to make, use, offer for sale, sell or import but the right to EXCLUDE others from making, using, offering for sale, selling or importing said creation or invention. If the patent has already been issued, the patentee must enforce it without the assistance of the United States Patent and Trademark Office.

The gist of this statute is to grant authority to protect discoveries and creations. In order to be patented an invention must be novel, useful, and not of an obvious nature. Now, the creators/inventors can shun their worries about having works copied or used without their permission.
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Yahoo to Prohibit Competitive Keyword Bids Containing Trademarks

Yahoo Search Marketing (searchmarketing.yahoo.com) has recently announced its advertisers of a new policy to be implemented as of March 1st 2006, concerning the use of trademarks within their products and services *.

Under the new policy, no reference to a trademark can be made (except for ads placed by the trademark owners themselves, obviously), and consequently no bids can be make for keywords containing such trademarks. Exceptions refer to usage of trademarks in non-competitive ads, such as those made by re-sellers, or in informative (and still non-competitive) ads.

The previous policy allowed references to competitors' trademarks and comparisons as long as they were "objective and informative" - the formulation makes me cringe, as it is clearly troublesome trying to evaluate one's objectivity when speaking of business competitors. As for the "informative" side of it... the probability for someone to actually PAY for an ad to be informative of someone else's product/service, that's as believable just like the existence of Santa Claus.

It is really good to see Yahoo making a big step forward in regulating abuse and misuse of trademarks, even though that probably translates in some revenue loss for them, by having certain advertisers migrate to a "friendlier" place such as Google. According to Google's policies, "[...] advertisers may select trademarked terms as keywords or use them in the content of the ad. As a provider of space for advertisements, Google is not in a position to arbitrate trademark disputes between advertisers and trademark owners. As stated in our Terms and Conditions, advertisers are responsible for the keywords and ad text that they choose to use. Accordingly, Google encourages trademark owners to resolve their disputes directly with the advertiser, particularly because the advertiser may have similar ads on other sites. However, as a courtesy to trademark owners, Google is willing to perform a limited investigation of reasonable complaints."

The question is why would Yahoo change its policies and apparently offer Google an even bigger bite from the SEM cake? It is way too early to say now, and their official explanation is not entirely believable: Yahoo states to have had the users' best interest in mind, by providing them with a better experience when searching terms that contain trademarks. Though this would make a laudable initiative with a good PR potential, experts know the search market is driven by large publishers and advertisers and not by the little surfing guys. Numerous speculations can be made: threats of large legal actions from trademark owners, pressure from certain groups of interests are among the most vehiculated ones. However, a more plausible one is that Yahoo makes preparations for a much larger scale movement destined to influence the market in a manner we cannot anticipate just yet.

Until further industry news, there's one thing to rejoice: from now on, no "better than Botox" ads on Yahoo and their partner sites!

* - the products and services covered by the new policy are: Sponsored Search, Local Advertising, Search Submit, Product Submit, Travel Submit and Directory Submit.

Otilia is a young certified professional with expertise in e-Marketing and e-Business, currently working as independent consultant and e-publisher. She has recently launched MarketingWHO.com, a professional Marketing Directory and blogs at The Marketing Journal.