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Registering a copyright for the play you wrote is tantamount to a public information campaign announcing that the play not only belongs to you, but that you have taken action to protect it from theft or misuse. LegalACE will register your copyright easily, quickly and inexpensively - whether it is for a play, an article in a magazine, a sculpture or a software package.
The subject of copyrights can be confusing, so this guide will address common questions and terms used to describe the process.
What is a copyright?
A Copyright is a form of protection granted by the U.S. Copyright Office for original works of authorship for a certain period of time. It is designed to guard creative works from being manipulated, stolen or pirated for other people’s gain. After the life of the copyright has ended, the work becomes part of the public domain, and anyone can use it.
Copyright Protection
What does it protect? Copyrights protect many types of creative, intellectual, scientific and artistic works. They may include:
Poems
Theses
Plays
Literary works
Movies
Dances
Musical Compositions
Audio recordings
Paintings
Drawings
Sculptures
Photos
Software
Radio & TV Broadcasts
What doesn’t it protect?
There are several categories of work that federal copyright does not protect. Here are four general categories:
Improvisational dances, speeches or performances that have not been written down or recorded;
Titles, names, short phrases and slogans; familiar symbols or designs;
Ideas, procedures, methods, systems;
Works that consist of information that is common property without any original authorship;
Plans or diagrams for inventions (patents protect inventions).
How is it different from a trademark?
Copyrights protect literary and artistic works, while trademarks protect words, phrases, symbols and designs that identify a brand or a source of goods or services.
What is an "automatic" or "natural" copyright?
Your work is protected from the moment you create it under U.S. Copyright law - even without registering a copyright. Taking the action of registering it, however, adds an extra layer of protection. For example, you must have a registered copyright on a piece of work in order to bring suit against someone in federal court for copyright infringement. It also enables the creator to have the facts of their copyright on the public record and have a certificate of registration, thus providing proof that you were the first to create the work in question.
How long does a copyright last?
For someone who is registering a copyright on a new piece of work, it typically lasts the life of the author, plus an additional 70 years. Then, the copyright registration is released. If it is an anonymous, pseudonymous or “work for hire” creation, the copyright lasts 95 years after first publication or 120 years after the year of creation, whichever comes first.
What is the process with LegalACE?
Here’s how the process works once you log onto our site, register and select Copyrights:
In writing
Executed voluntarily
Involve full and fair disclosure at the time of execution
Conscionable (fair)
Summary
You can protect your intellectual property by registering copyrights for the articles, songs and artistic endeavors you have invested time, energy and finances on. LegalACE can help you accomplish this easily and inexpensively, adding an additional layer of protection that tells people that you own and control how the material is used.
Go to www.LegalACE.com or,
Call us at (866) 434-3706, and we’ll walk you through the process.
Frequent Questions
A copyright is the right to copy, sell, or publicly display a work such as a book, a movie, a song, a painting, a computer program, or some other artistic work.
A copyright is established automatically when someone creates a work. You do not need to register a copyright with the United States Copyright Office in order to gain copyright protection.
Although you get a copyright automatically by simply creating a work, consider the following consequences of not registering your copyright:
Registration essentially proves that you really created the work: If two people get into a court case where each of them claims to have created an art work, how will the judge know who really did? By registering with the U.S. Copyright Office in a timely manner, there is a legal presumption that the person that registered is the creator of the work.
You won't be able to gain damages if you can't prove what you've lost: If you fail to register with the U.S. Copyright Office before or within three months of publication of the work, and a court battle ensues over the copyrighted work, you cannot get a judgment for more money than what you can prove you lost.
You can't get attorney's fees: If you fail to register with the U.S. Copyright Office before or within there months of publication of the work, and a court battle ensues over the copyrighted work, you cannot sue for attorney's fees.
You cannot sue anyone for using your work: In order to sue someone for using your work, it must have been registered with the U.S. Copyright Office.
You would not gain protection in other countries: The United States Copyright Office works jointly with numerous other countries in offering copyright protection.
Thus even though you are theoretically afforded copyright protection by default and some people attempt to create a "poor man's copyright" (mailing the work to yourself by certified mail), there is simply no substitute for registering your work.
Copyrights protect literary, dramatic, musical, and artistic works. This includes such things as poetry, books, movies, songs, etc. In order to be copyrighted, there must be some means of recording or documenting the work.
You can't copyright things that are commonly recognized and used publicly, lists of ingredients (recipes), systems by which to do something, or anything that's made up of entirely common information (such as calendars or rulers).
No. Neither inventions nor trademarks can be copyrighted. Inventions must be patented. Trademarks are collections of words or symbols that represent a company selling something and must be trademarked.
In this electronic age, every business with a Web site automatically possesses an international reach, a global business identity. Internet domain names – the unique information after http://www. in a URL – take on tremendous marketing and branding significance for any company. Double that for companies that operate exclusively online. Unfortunately, there are unethical people in the marketplace who want to illegally capitalize on business’s successful domain names. One way companies can defend themselves against this is by trademarking their domain name.
What is a trademark? Trademarks are words, symbols, graphic elements or phrases that represent specific products or services from a unique source. Business owners pour time, money and talent into the choice of domain names, with the hope that they are truly memorable and will effectively embody the company brand. Having that domain high-jacked for someone else’s gain can be infuriating and pose significant business losses. The courts don’t take too kindly to it either.
Let’s look at the 2003 case of Yahoo! Inc. v. Yahoo Moving & Storage Inc. The search engine giant filed suit against the moving and storage company because Yahoo Moving & Storage had three domains with the word “yahoo” in them and failed to respond to a “Cease and Desist” letter. The four-employee, $500,000 moving and storage company then offered to sell its business to Yahoo! Inc. for $5 million, resulting in Yahoo! suing the company for cyber-squatting, infringement and dilution. The court awarded Yahoo! $225,000 in statutory damages.
The Yahoo! trademark infringement case and others prove the existence of this unethical practice on the Internet. These predators want to profit from successful companies that have established themselves in the marketplace, created strong brands and an Internet presence, but haven’t bothered registering a trademark for their domain name.
Trademark Transgressions
Internet highway robbers have a variety of ways to cyber-steal. They create domain names that are just a letter off of a successful domain, hoping to catch those people whose fingers slip off the keyboard as they type in the name of the site. They purchase domains that include the name of successful companies and hold them for ransom until the company buys them out, as in the Yahoo! case. They even embed misleading meta-tags and do what’s called deep-linking on their site, burying links to the more successful sites so that they will pop up in a search for the “real” company. No matter the strategy, they are all designed to lure unwitting Web visitors and steal business.
Trademarking a domain name is the best prescription for preventing this type of theft. It won’t keep people from trying to steal business from each other on the Internet, but it will protect the owner of a site from these illegal practices. If someone tries to profit from a domain name that is trademarked, the owners have legal recourse. They can file a Cease and Desist Order, ask that the site be “deregistered,” or sue the offending domain owners.
Unique Names Best Candidates for Trademark
Startups that haven’t chosen domains yet should take care to select names that can be protected with a trademark. If it’s too general, it probably won’t pass muster, because you it’s difficult to trademark words from our everyday vernacular. Think cheapfood.com or nicejeans.com. But if it is unique enough – think Google, eBay, Yahoo! –it can be trademarked and protected from cyber-poachers.
Look Before You Leap
Before buying a domain name, startups should thoroughly research existing trademarks or trademarks that are extremely close to theirs. By not doing their homework, businesses can shoot themselves in the foot by creating a domain too close to the name of another company and get entangled in trademark disputes – exactly what they are trying to avoid. Domain owners have some options when it comes to trademark searches: they can hire an attorney; they can hire an online firm; or they can do the research themselves through the U.S. Patent Office at www.uspto.gov.
Shopping for Trademark Registration Service
Whether they hire an attorney or register the trademark online by themselves, business owners should explore their options. When shopping around for the service, ask these questions:
What is the price, and what does that include?
Is the service for state or federal trademarks – or both?
Does the service include Internet monitoring for trademark infringement?
Once they have researched existing trademarks, settled on a domain name, purchased the domain and registered the trademark, startup owners can safely do business on the Internet without the fear that someone is going to steal their electronic mojo. Because even if it does happen, the startups are empowered with words that will scare even the most veteran Internet business owners: “See you in court!”
Cecile Duhnke is Marketing Communications Manager with LegalACE (www.LegalACE.com), an online legal document preparation company located in Scottsdale, Ariz. For more information, contact us at info@legalace.com or call (866) 434-3706.
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