Explain the difference between copyright trademark and patent [New Research]

Last updated : Sept 17, 2022

Write a comment

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 Loni Standridge, have a nice day.
- Queen Wrighton, Staff Member

as an intellectual property lawyer always get asked what's the difference between copyright trademark and patent at a fundamental level copyright protects your original creative works such as books movies songs paintings photographs and web content as the owner of a copyright you can control how your work is reproduced distributed and presented publicly and you can suit infringers in court an idea itself cannot be copyrighted a work must be in a fixed tangible form to be protected copyright protection provides legal evidence and public notice of ownership and by lying the copyright owner to bring suits in court if there's any infringement authors artists and other creative professionals typically seek copyright protection on the other hand trademark protects the names symbols or slogans for products or services that you sell in other words a trademark lets the consumer tell the difference between one company's product or services from another's trademarks include brand names such as coca-cola and images such as Nikes famous switch as the owner of a trademark you can sue for trademark infringement and prevent someone else from using your name symbol or slogan a trademark registration can potentially have an unlimited term but has to be renewed every ten years the owner can renew the trademark registration as long as the mark remains in continued use for more information about how to file your own trademark feel free to enroll in my course how to trademark on your own business and product owners typically seek trademark protection and lastly patent protects your inventions and designs there's two kinds of patent protection utility patent and design patent utility patent protects your inventions with a new or improved function such as machines processes or chemical compositions on the other hand design patent protects any new original and ornamental design for an article of manufacture that does not affect the articles function filing a utility or design patent gives you the exclusive right to prevent others from making use selling or importing the protected invention if you do not file a patent then the law doesn't offer any protection for your invention a utility patent protects an invention for twenty years and it cannot be renewed on the other hand a design patent protects a design for 14 years and it also cannot be renewed inventors and designers typically need patent protection so there we have it there's three kinds of intellectual property protection you can seek for your product service name symbol slogan or invention or design copyright protects your creative works trademark protects your names symbols and slogans for those products or services and patent protects your inventions and designs

Thanks Keneth your participation is very much appreciated
- Queen Wrighton

About the author

Queen Wrighton

I've studied reading education at Nebraska Wesleyan University in Lincoln and I am an expert in response surface methodology. I usually feel moody. My previous job was small engine mechanics I held this position for 3 years, I love talking about button collecting and kite flying. Huge fan of Bill Nighy I practice motocross racing and collect for sports cards.