Do you need a Patent, Trademark, or Copyright?

Saturday, April 14, 2007

Most of us know that the chances to get our intellectual work protected against plagiarism or thieving is by registering such work at the corresponding office so the law can protect our original creations, but do you know which law applies to your work?

There is a common misconception about intellectual protection that makes people confuse the terms patent, trademark, or copyright in the belief that they are just the same or just exchangeable ways to refer to the same protection. If it is true that all of them protect your intellectual rights, however, it depends on the nature of your work to register it under one or another classification.

The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) define a patent as a work, which is the result of a person's inventive. The law protects the property rights of an inventor for 20 years filing an application for the first time in the United States. Depending on the date of the invention, the USPTO may grant such rights from an earlier date after paying maintenance fees for extemporary registration.

Trademarks, however, are totally different. Anyone who has a symbol, word, name, or device, which is used for trading goods, can file a trademark if it is used to distinguish or indicate its source among others. In these cases, people can file an application for a trademark, being the only registration with exchangeable definitions, referred as to servicemark to protect services rather than products, or just "mark" in both cases.

When it comes to copyright, the law refers to the protection provided to authors who develop “original works of authorship”. This law covers a wide range of intellectual creations, including artistic, literary, musical, and dramatic or other intellectual works, whether published or unpublished. The 1976 Copyright Act, in addition, grants the rights to display, perform, or reproduce such works and their derivations, as well as distribute copies using different means.

Granting exclusive rights to your work may be satisfactory intellectually speaking, but financially you must consider how costly the results are of owning exclusive rights of a work that might not repay the money spent on its registration and, some times, a work that nobody else would care if it were available publicly.

Prevention is better than cure in medicine and law. Before filing an application to protect your intellectual property rights, carefully weigh the works you are considering to register and if you think they have a face value in the short-term or long-term, go ahead for your patent, trademark, or registration.

In the case of US patents, remember that your rights are only granted within the USA, its territories and US possessions.