For my blog today, I'm going to talk about the difference between copyrights, patents, and trademarks. It's kinda cool that my group was assigned this question, because I asked about copyrights in class just a few weeks ago in class. Going over this material again really helped me understand some of the differences and how each of these protective brand elements work. All are basically there to protect the creator of a new product or invention, or to give rights to a brand name, etc.
First I will start with copyrights. A copyright is something that usually is not registered, and gives the creator the right to copy, duplicate, and distribute the new work or invention. Copyrights only protect the creator the product for a certain period of time. After this time runs out, the right to copy, etc is open to the public. There are also limitations and exceptions to copyright that are not covered that the public can capitalize on. Thus copyright mainly gives the creator of the product the exclusive right to copy and distribute the product for a certain period of time.
Patents are first different from copyrights in that they are granted by the government. The inventor of the new product fills out a patent application identifying the invention as something new or different than the products that are currently on the market. I'm using the term "products" in a broad sense. Patents and copyrights can extend to any invention, physical or non-physical, such as Facebook for example. The patent applicant is granted certain rights over the product for a specific amount of time in exchange for disclosing the product to the public. For example, many drug companies have a five year patent on a drug where no other producer can duplicate the recipe for the drug. However, after five years, it is legal to make generic brands.
Finally, trademarks are basically designed more to protect the distinguishing features of a product in order to differentiate the product from the competition. A trademark is designated by a small symbol so that the public knows that the brand name, design, logo, etc is trademarked. One example of a symbol/logo that is trademarked is the Nike swoosh. In social media, some elements of the design of Facebook are trademarked so that no other social media site trying to break into the market can look and feel EXACTLY like Facebook. A legal claim against someone who has used your trademarked entity is trademark infringement.
Until next time!
Rache
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