Posted: 13 January 2018 at 7:56pm | IP Logged | 7
|
post reply
|
|
Ray Brady wrote:
...I'm going to pretend they deliberately chose the wrong term so that they could copyright it... |
|
|
Ray, forgive me getting technical here, and picking a nit... I am not doing it to step on your joke, but many people use "copyright" interchangeably with "trademark."
One cannot copyright a word. That is why both Marvel and DC could have a "Captain Marvel," for instance. BUT, you can trademark a word!
Trademarks are used to avoid confusion on the marketplace, for one example. It is used to protect a company brand, and must be renewed every few years. You can lose it if you don't use it (see "Captain Marvel" again, for an example of that). One must pay to have a trademark for it to be granted.
Copyrights protect original works of authorship. One a work is created in reproducible form, it is automatically copyrighted. You could draw something right now, add a copyright notice to it, and it is technically copyrighted. BUT, you should register the copyright (which costs way less than getting a trademark, incidentally), as it gives unquestionable legal proof that you own the copyright if that is put into question. Copyrights last the lifetime of the creator of the work, plus 70 years after the creator has passed. Works created for hire last 95 years from publication, or 120 years from the date of creation, whichever is shortest.
The people who made that dry erase board could trademark "speech bubble," if nobody else has done so.
|