Can a trademark be patented [Definitive Guide]

Last updated : Sept 3, 2022

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What is the difference between a patent and trademark?

What's the Difference Between Patents and Trademarks? A patent allows the creator of certain kinds of inventions that contain new ideas to keep others from making commercial use of those ideas without the creator's permission. Trademarks, on the other hand, are not concerned with how a new technology is used.

Which is better patent or copyright?

The Difference Between a Patent and a Copyright While a patent, with the exclusion of a design patent, protects inventions of new processes, copyright protects published and unpublished original works, including works in literature, music, art, architecture, software, and choreography.

Is a copyright a patent?

How is a copyright different from a patent or a trademark? Copyright protects original works of authorship, while a patent protects inventions or discoveries. Ideas and discoveries are not protected by the copyright law, although the way in which they are expressed may be.

What is difference between copyright and patent?

A copyright protects the expression of an idea while a patent protects the idea itself. Patent works more on a design while copyright is another work of an already described design.

How long does a trademark last?

A federal trademark lasts 10 years from the date of registration, with 10-year renewal terms. Between the fifth and sixth year after the registration date, the registrant must file an affidavit to state that the mark is still in use.

What can you not trademark?

Proper names or likenesses without consent from the person.
Generic terms, phrases, or the like.
Government symbols or insignia.
Vulgar or disparaging words or phrases.
The likeness of a U.S. President, former or current.
Immoral, deceptive, or scandalous words or symbols.
Sounds or short motifs.

What are the 3 types of patents?

What kind of patent do you need? There are three types of patents - Utility, Design, and Plant. Utility patents may be granted to anyone who invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, article of manufacture, or compositions of matters, or any new useful improvement thereof.

How much does a patent cost?

A patent attorney will usually charge between $8,000 and $10,000 for a patent application, but the cost can be higher. In most cases, you should budget between $15,000 and $20,000 to complete the patenting process for your invention.

Do patents expire?

Patent Expiration Utility patents expire four, eight, and 12 years after issuance of the patent if the maintenance fees are not paid at these points in time. The patent actually expires at 3.5 years, 7.5 years, and 11.5 years, but there is a six-month grace period in which to pay the maintenance fee.

Can I trademark my name?

You can trademark your name if it has business or commercial value. Trademarking your name gives you an additional brand and keeps others from using your name. To trademark your name you must meet specific requirements with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).

How do I know if my idea is patentable?

Patent Public Search.
USPTO Patent Full-Text and Image Database (PatFT)
USPTO Patent Application Full-Text and Image Database (AppFT)
Global Dossier.
Patent Application Information Retrieval (PAIR)
Public Search Facility.
Patent and Trademark Resource Centers (PTRCs)

Can I trademark a word?

When you trademark a word, you give a person or company exclusive rights to connect one brand with that word. You can trademark a word that identifies your company or your products. Register your trademark with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) to protect your trademark throughout the United States.

What is a trademark secret?

A trade secret: is information that has either actual or potential independent economic value by virtue of not being generally known, has value to others who cannot legitimately obtain the information, and. is subject to reasonable efforts to maintain its secrecy.

How do I copyright a name for free?

You can not register a trademark for free. However, you can establish something known as a "common law trademark" for free, simply by opening for business. The benefit of relying on common law trademark rights is that it's free, and you don't need to do any specific work filling out forms, etc.

How do I copyright a logo and name?

All you need to do is register your ownership of your copyright with the Office for United States Copyrighting. You can do this either by sending a document in through the mail or submitting an application online. Typically, and at the time of publication, it costs between $35 and $85 to officially copyright a logo.

Can you lose a trademark if you don't protect it?

If you don't enforce your trademark, you risk losing reputation, business, sales, customers, and more to the infringer. There's also a concept in trademark law called abandonment. Generally, if you don't use your mark for three years or more, it's considered abandoned.

How much does it cost to file a trademark for a phrase?

If you have ever asked yourself how much does it cost to trademark a phrase, according to the current fee schedule on the USPTO, trademark registration fees cost $275 per mark per class. If you need an attorney's assistance, the cost averages around $1,000 to $2,000.

How do I sell a trademarked item?

The only way to legally sell items with a trademark that you do not own is to obtain a license from the trademark owner. Trademarks are valuable property rights and are vigorously protected by their owners in most cases -- even against a small, localized business.

Can you trademark a name already in use but not trademarked?

1. Can You File for a Trademark That Exists? Updated November 12, 2020: If you're wondering, "can you trademark something that already exists," the simple answer is "no." Generally speaking, if somebody has used a trademark before you, you can't register the trademark for yourself.

Can I put a Nike logo on a shirt for personal use?

In fact, copyright and trademark violations can in some cases lead to criminal charges. Selling shirts with copyrighted images isn't impossible, but you should never use someone else's logos on your T-shirts or other clothing without their explicit permission.

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Comment by Rory Spratling

hey welcome today's video I'm Rick chapel with dmca agent service comm so today we're taking a look at copyright vs. trademark vs. patent this is an area where there could be some confusion so hopefully stepping back and looking at these three main categories of intellectual property will help you understand each one so start with copyright copyright is the right to exploit a work of authorship original authorship actually and so let's just look at the classic example the Harry Potter books so JK Rowling decides to write another Harry Potter book when she finishes she's automatically granted what's known as common law copyright now this form of copyright is pretty weak so she's actually one ago gonna want to go ahead and register with Copyright Office to get a stronger form and if she does that within 90 days she's granted additional rights under copyright law and so she's going to do that now once she has that in place you know how is she going to exploit that work of authorship well for an author their traditional approach would be to work with a publisher she would sign a contract with a publishing house and she would give that publishing house the right to make copies and sell her book and in exchange she would get a healthy advance and royalties on each sale and so in that scenario she has exploited her original authorship under copyright law now obviously she can do it in other ways too she can sign a deal with the movie production company to turn the book into a movie maybe audio books you know there are different approaches to exploiting that authorship but again we're gonna give the person who took the time and effort to come up with this creative work the right to quite frankly make some money off of it now there are cases where people don't make money off of it if you look at open source software for instance people will create it just as you know a good goodwill effort as part of the online community or something of that sort but you know generally we're talking about exploiting it for some type of financial benefit the original work of authorship of course doesn't have to be a book it can be anything that's creative software code images music there's a variety of different areas so if you're interested in looking at those you can go the Copyright Office website and they have actually some what are called circulars which give you a pretty good idea of you know the different things so again we're talking about the right to exploit a work of original authorship a trademark is a word phrase or symbol that distinguishes a source of goods for consumers okay this is really important so what we're talking about is basically giving consumers confidence that when they see a particular word phrase or symbol that the goods that are being sold under that word phrase or symbol have a certain quality so let's talk about tires okay well how about Goodyear okay we all know Goodyear tires and you have a particular opinion regarding the quality of those tires that you associate with Goodyear and so when you see the Goodyear name where you see the could dear little flying foot thing the symbol you know you know okay that's good you associate that and so maybe you buy it maybe you don't doesn't really matter but you have that confidence that when you see that name and that symbol you know what you're getting now if another you know cheesy cheese ball company in China you know puts together some really you know horrible quality tires and they call them Goodyear good years let's say that an S to the end of it you know at that point you know are you going to be able to recognize that hey this is different companies a Chinese company and maybe they're making you know crappy tires that are gonna blow up after a couple miles you know they're gonna be a much lower quality and so for consumers you know that could be confusing and in trademark law when we have a trademark infringement claim that's exactly what is alleged that one company has you know used a word phrase or symbol that is so close to the trademark of another company that's causing confusion for consumers so a trademark is a word phrase or symbol that distinguishes the source of goods let's use another example if you see a swooosh symbol kind of that round teardrop bending up symbol you are almost immediately going to associate it with Nike that's their their symbol and everybody kind of knows what it is and so if you aren't in sports apparel or something of that sort and you see that well you expect a certain level of quality you're buying a Nike product again you may think it's great you know it's terrible you know whatever but you have confidence that when you see that symbol you're getting you know whatever it is that you expect and if you got something radically different well that would cause all kinds of problems in the consumer market because people wouldn't be able to trust in the quality that they you know they thought they were getting when they were buying something so that's a trademark now patents patents are something kind of entirely different a patent is the right to exclusively exploit an invention and so what we're talking about here is actually fairly broad because people are really creative so there are a lot of different types of patents that can be patents for processes different types of machines all kinds of different things and really frankly you'd probably want to talk to a patent attorney at some point if you're getting anywhere near you know issues related patents but basically the idea here is that if somebody invents something it's unique and something new then we're going to give that person the right to exploit it much like in copyright you know the author has the right to exploit the book they just wrote so we're gonna give them the right to exploit that invention for the certain period of time or rather lengthy period of time and the reason we're going to do that is because we want to promote inventions we want people to go out and invent things and if there was no patent protection well you know why would people go out and invent things there there would be much less emphasis to do so much less motivation to do so because here's what would happen I would go out and let's say I invent something some form of software that works it's gonna revolutionize the online market and I put up my crappy little website and I launch it and I've got you know my entire capital budget for launching this business is the $400 I have of my Capital One credit card okay well Google happens to run across my website and you know a week after I launched it and they take a look at the product and they say wow this is amazing this is gonna revolutionize everything and so they buy the product from me for $199 and then they just reverse engineer it and make their own copy and go out and sell it now who's going to win that battle me or Google and you know the cold hard truth is Google has billions of dollars I have four hundred dollars I think we know how that's going to go not well for me so with patents you know we're going to give that exclusivity to the invention to exploit th

Thanks for your comment Rory Spratling, have a nice day.
- Bobbi Lebouef, Staff Member

Comment by Marivel

in this video we will discuss copyrights patents and trademarks the differences between them the advantages they have reasons why you need to know about them some of the things that can go right and wrong with them copyright is easy you can create a copyrighted work instantly you don't need a lawyer you don't need a filing fee it's a simple matter when you take a photograph with your phone record something with your phone film or audio it's copyrighted from the moment of creation for copyright all you need is it has to be original and has to be fixed in a tangible medium of expression it's very simple we create copyrighted works all day for a copyright you don't have to send it to Washington you don't have to pay anything there were advantages to registering your copyright in Washington with the Library of Congress is where the United States copyright office is located there are reasons you should register your work but it's protected from the moment of creation if you wrote a song and you want to put it on YouTube I think you should do it immediately as soon as you think it's you want anyone to hear it it is protected if you register it with the Copyright Office it'll take months but you're protected before it even becomes officially registered trademarks are important because they distinguish goods from each other and services from each other some of the issues with that again you have to think you don't want to confuse the consumer of course everyone knows Apple they sat in 1919 mid 1970s and they wanted to trademark that name there was a problem right away with them getting a trademark because the Beatles who were more famous in the late 60s created Apple and they meant Apple music and Apple Records Apple publishing their company was Apple so when these guys in California Steve Jobs wanted a trademark on Apple the Beatles were concerned but the everyone talked about this and say well this won't cause confusion because Apple Computer said well we do computers we don't doom you so there's no issue how could you there'll be no confusion when the Beatles saw that and fine it went on until output computers get into music and then there was okay now there's a problem because when Apple computers were created of course computers originally weren't considered to be fun there were things for work in computations so that had to be worked out so that both companies could stay as Apple to get a trademark you'll have to have a fee of about $290 you'll have to pay it's an extensive application process you definitely need a lawyer you have to do a search of trademarks to make sure yours isn't too close to something or the color or your logo and so forth that's pretty complicated you have to have a lawyer a trademark lawyer patents are inventions there are three kinds of patents there is a patent call a utility patent that's what you normally think of something that's useful if you go to Starbucks the insulating sleeves it's on the cup so you won't burn your hand that's that's a patent the lid on the cup is a patent because of how it's designed the the type of hole in it the reservoir where the other coffee goes and so forth those utility pens a design patent is some design that you want to protect a patent lasts for 20 years so there's a utility patent a design patent and the third patent is a plant patent meaning you're crossing one type of plant with another for some scientific reasons and a lot of medicines come from plants so plant patents have been around since 1930 they're extremely important in like the other two they last for 20 years to get a patent it's insanely complicated you need probably $20,000 at the minimum you have to do six tensive searches you need a patent attorney who's much different than any other kind of attorney it's a higher level of expertise but you have some good advantages by knowing what they are knowing the difference with copyrights patents and trademarks as I mentioned copyrights a very important there at the government backing your work it's your work is copyrighted from the moment of creation it's very important you have the right to exclude others from using your music trademark is something that will identify the origin of goods the recording artist of the band the record label patents can be a process it's very important to know about them know the differences and to be able to use them to your advantage

Thanks Marivel your participation is very much appreciated
- Bobbi Lebouef

About the author

Bobbi Lebouef

I've studied collection management at Ithaca College in Ithaca and I am an expert in literary journalism. I usually feel predatory. My previous job was art restorer I held this position for 19 years, I love talking about inventing and landboarding. Huge fan of Khalid I practice beach volleyball and collect sports memorabilia.

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