I’ll try to explain you what are exactly patents, copyrights and trademarks. Let’s get started.

What is a trademark?

Have you ever seen a company’s logo, symbol or motto? Well, if that company goes through series of processes in the trademark office, then that logo, symbol or motto becomes a trademark.

They do this, obviously, to stop abuse. If any other company tries to use the company’s symbol, for example, then they can easily get sued and lose the case because they didn’t check the symbol was trademarked.

What is a copyright?

You hear this world around the music industry a lot. It is used for art usually. Music, for example.

Companies can copyright an individual piece for several years by going to the government and going through all the processes needed in order for that piece to be copyrighted.

So if you ever try to entirely reproduce the art that is copyrighted, you can potentially be sued and pay big fines (they’ll probably do some background check on you too by checking the public records. Of course, if you do that without permission. You can eventually go to the author and ask for permission to reproduce the piece. Most of the times, you’ll need to pay money for limited reproduction.

What is a patent?

Inventors usually patent their stuff. The purpose here is, again, for their invention not to be ‘stolen’ by other inventors or business people.

You need to go through series of processes in order to prove that your invention is really new and useful, though. Not everything you invent can be in those 2 categories in the same time.

My latest article deals with the problem on how to locate old classmates.

Promo Video CNET

Comments are closed