Trademark vs. Copyright
Trademark vs. Copyright
Copyrights and Trademarks are important protection devices essential to the growth and success of a business or brand. Without protection your work is free for anyone to use without seeking permission or giving credit. While not protecting your work may result in loss profit, what is sometimes more important to a brand is proper credit.
Not only is it important to protect your work but also to use the proper method of protection. Improper protection will result in the same effect as no protection at all.
- A copyright is used to protect “original works of art” including literary, musical and artistic. Copyrights protect the form of expression rather than the subject matter of the writing. For example, the description of of a machine could be copyrighted, but this would only prevent others from copying the description; it would not prevent others from writing a description of their own or from making and using the machine.
- A trademark is a word, name, symbol or device used commercially to identify the source of the goods and distinguish them from others. Trademarks prevent others from using a confusingly similar mark, but not from making similar goods. Apple’s trademark protection is what prevents another company from using an “apple” or anything that closely resembles such on an electronic device. Those companies however, are free to build and create electronics.
Note: This brief summary is in no way intended to be a complete explanation of copyright and trademark – only a simple illustration of the difference between the two. Patents are a totally different beast within itself.
The Burgeoning Young Attorney 