> Exactly. And that should answer Dale's question of "So what is the > point of having a copyright office." Your work is automatically under > copyright when you create it. But if you register the work with the US > Copyright Office, then you have a solid legal ground if someone else > comes along later and tries to claim "I made that."
Essentially, registering copyright provides a formal legal date as of when copyright existed, and allows you to sue for much higher damages if you take someone to court. Whether you *do* take someone to court is another matter. There are costs in time and money, and you are looking at legal fees and court costs regardless. I've seen cases that haven't gone to court because of the costs. For example, Margaret Mitchell's original novel of "Gone with the Wind", has long since lapsed into the public domain. But you won't see a free or cheap electronic copy in the US. The Mitchell Estate threatens legal action if you try. They have no legal leg to stand on, but no one that might be inclined to do it has the time and money to fight them in court (You can find Gone with the Wind on Australian Project Gutenberg.) > The same applies to trademark, by the way. Anyone can claim a > trademark on something. You don't have to register it. But by filing > your trademark with the US Patent and Trademark Office, you have > greater legal standing if someone tries to use the trademark. That's > the difference between ™ and ®. You can claim any trademark with ™. If > you register your trademark with the USPTO, you can use ®. There's a critical difference in trademark/service mark handling. When you register a copyright, you pay the fee, submit sample copies of teh work, and when the paperwork is processed, you have a registered copyright. . When you register a trademark/service mark, you apply for registration, and wait to see whether anyone objects. If no one does, you get the registered mark. And *doing* trademark searches is a good idea. Years back, TV network NBC decided to update their logo and associated branding. They hired iconic design firm Chermayeff and Geismar to do the new look for them. C&G submitted a design NBC liked, but explicitly warned them they hadn't done a trademark search. NBC didn't do one either. It turned out the new NBC logo bore a *very* close resemblance to one used by a small Midwestern public TV station. C&G hadn't stolen their idea (and didn't even know they existed.) They just happened to have designed a similar logo. But they *were* infringing on an existing trademark. NBC settled with the small public TV station, for a $25,000 payment, and a donation of $500K worth of studio gear that was obsolete by NBC standards, but at least a generation ahead of what the public TV station had. The poublic TV station Art Director commented that he had *no* problem designing a new logo for his station given what they got from the deal. NBC had a red face for years about it in the industry. > Jim ______ Dennis https://plus.google.com/u/0/105128793974319004519 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most engaging tech sites, Slashdot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot _______________________________________________ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
