Copyrights, Trademarks, and Patents

According to the US Copyright Office, copyright is a form of intellectual property protection that gives authors of original works of authorship several exclusive rights to their own work, including the right to reproduce, distribute, or perform the work publicly; the right to prepare derivative works based on the work; and the right to display the work publicly.

Examples of the types of works that can be protected by a copyright include:

• Movies
  
• Photographs
  
• Sound recordings
  
• Books, poems, and other literary works
  
• Music
  
• Lyrics
  
• Architectural plans

Derivative works are works that are based on (or derived from) and existing work or works. A derivative work can be protected by a copyright, provided that the derivative work (also known as a new work) includes enough new material to be considered an "original work of authorship" in its own right.

Here are a few examples of things that would be considered derivative works:

Sequel of a movie or book

Movie based on a book

Sound recording that includes previously published material

Drawing based on a photograph or sculpture

Documentary that includes previously published photos or video footage

Sound recording that has been remixed

Musical arrangements of previous musical material

Fair use is an exception to the requirements of copyright law; in other words, fair use is a legal way in which a party who is not the copyright owner can use copyrighted material without permission.

However, you can't just call whatever you want to do "fair use" and pretend it's legal. This is not 'nam. There are rules. And those rules are that fair use applies to the following purposes:

• commentary
  
• criticism
  
• journalism
  
• education
  
• library archiving
  
• scholarship

A trademark is another type of intellectual property protection, but its focus is a little different than a copyright. While a copyright protects against unauthorized use of a certain work, a trademark protects the connection between the trademark and the company, person, or brand it's representing.

In other words, a trademark is a way to identify a company or person; that identification is what is being protected.

For example, consider the Shell gas station's shell logo. When you see that logo, you know that you're pulling up to a Shell gas station. If I opened up a gas station and used that same logo or a similar one, that would be considered trademark infringement—Shell has worked hard to build that customer recognition based on their logo, and only the trademark holder is legally able to profit from that recognition.

In some cases, yes—but only in very specific circumstances.

Since a logo is also an image or picture, it seems like common sense that a logo could carry both a copyright and a trademark. However, this is not always the case.

In order to be eligible for a copyright, a work must have "unique authorship." Keeping in mind that names and short phrases are not copyrightable, take a look at the logo shown here. Yes, there are a few different colors and font sizes, but there is no real "authorship" here. Therefore, this logo would not be eligible for copyright protection.

(Take a look at this logo copyright test for more explanation of this limitation.)

A patent is a different beast entirely—patents are available for inventions.

For something to be considered an invention, and thus eligible for a patent, it must be a new, novel way of doing something, something that differs in a significant way from all other processes.

Inventions are what most of us may think of in relation to a patent, but patents can also be obtained (at least in the US) on new genome discoveries and new varieties of plants.