As an entrepreneur or aspiring small business owner, one of the most significant considerations that may come to mind is how to protect your work. What steps should you take to ensure that someone else couldn’ t lay claim to your product or service? Does a patent, copyright or trademark apply?
The U. S. Patent and Trademark Office website provides a clear distinction between these three types of protection:
Patents
A patent for an invention is the grant of a property right to the inventor, issued by the United States Patent and Trademark Office. It provides the patent owner with the right to exclude others from making, using, or selling the patented invention. Generally, the term of a new patent is 20 years from the earliest date on which the application for the patent was filed in the United States( not including the provisional patent application, if any). There are three types of patents including Utility Patents, Design Patents, and Plant Patents.
Copyright
Copyright is a form of protection provided to the authors of“ original works of authorship” including literary, dramatic, musical, artistic, and certain other intellectual works fixed in a tangible medium, both published and unpublished. The 1976 Copyright Act generally gives the owner of copyright the exclusive right to reproduce the copyrighted work, to prepare derivative works, to distribute copies or phonorecords of the copyrighted work, to perform the copyrighted work publicly, or to display the copyrighted work publicly.
Trademarks and Servicemarks
A trademark is a word, name, symbol, or device that is used in trade with goods to indicate the source of the goods and to distinguish them from the goods of others. A servicemark is the same as a trademark except that it identifies and distinguishes the source of a service rather than a product. The terms“ trademark” and“ mark” are commonly used to refer to both trademarks and servicemarks. A trademark can be registered with the US Patent and Trademark Office by filing a trademark application, indicating your“ intent to use” the mark in commerce.
Intellectual Property Rights( Overseas)
Since the rights granted by a U. S. patent extend only throughout the territory of the United States and have no effect in a foreign country, an inventor who wishes patent protection in other countries must apply for a patent in each of the other countries or in regional patent offices. Almost every country has its own patent law, and a person desiring a patent in a particular country must make an application for patent in that country, in accordance with the requirements of that country. Similarly, local laws apply to trademark, copyrights, and other forms of intellectual property in each jurisdiction.
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