We can assist you with registering a copyright, trademark, or service mark in California. Copyrights, trademarks, and service marks protect products, ideas, or images associated with certain people or businesses. Though they’re often lumped together (like they are here), they each target different content or services. Whether you need a copyright, trademark, or service mark will depend on exactly what it is that you want to protect.
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What is a copyright?
Copyrights protect claims to non-tangible items or ideas. They protect original works authored by a person or a conjunction of people and can include any type of creation whether it is dramatic, musical, literary, or cinematic. Essentially, they cover a work or a body of work by an author, artist, or creator.
Once you have a copyright, your work is protected from unlicensed reproductions and intellectual infringement while giving you the exclusive right to sell your work. For example, if an architect designs, builds, and copyrights a house, the owner of the house now has the rights to use and live in it. What they don’t have the right to do, however, is make unauthorized reproductions. In other words, the creator who has copyrighted their work has the rights to sell their creation, but unless another person receives permission from the creator they cannot reproduce it.
What is a trademark?
So how does a trademark differ from a copyright? While the former protects the right to a body of work, the latter protects the right to a name, logo, or design that identifies a particular product. Your trademark lets potential customers know instantly that a product was created by you or your business.
What a copyright is to an author, a trademark is to a business. It gives the owner of the trademark sole control over the reproduction of their particular product without the threat of infringement. Kleenex, the name of a product line of tissues, can’t be used by any seller of tissues except the company that owns the trademark to Kleenex.
What is a service mark?
Like trademarks, service marks identify and protect names or symbols that a company uses. However, instead of a product a service mark identifies and protects the business that offers a service. The Nike swoosh is one of the most well known examples of a trademark and it appears on all of Nike’s products.
The names “Nike” or “Starbucks”, on the other hand, are service marks that identify the company that provides particular services. No one can sell products with the Starbucks’ mermaid logo without infringing their trademark and no one can provide services or products using the name Starbucks without infringing their service mark. Despite the differences between trademarks and service marks, the process of applying with the United States Patent and Trademark Office is the same.
Why do you need them?
Copyrights, trademarks, and service marks have different specific uses, but each one is used to protect your ownership and domain over commercial items. If you don’t have the corresponding mark for your work or product, you could get into trouble. A third party could potentially use your creation for their own commercial purposes and make money off of it. If you discover the infringement, there might not be a lot you can do in the way of reversing it or seeking damages.
How do you get one?
To get a copyright, trademark, or service mark, you must file an application with the United States Patent and Trademark Office. Your mark will cover your registered item in the United States, but won’t necessarily protect it in other countries.
A legal document assistant like me can help you prepare your registration. The application requires abundant information on the item before it is filed. To apply for a copyright, you must submit the full work, be it written text, a song, a photograph, or movie. A trademark or service mark requires an image of the logo or name, the product it identifies, and specific information on it. Has the logo or product been in use before? Where is it used? What’s the history of the product? These are important to answer in detail before sending off your application. Especially in the case of trademarks, it may be useful to make sure that another person or business doesn’t already claim the particular item.
Register a Copyright, Trademark, or Service Mark in California
Looking to protect your work with a copyright? Or your business, brand, or product with a trademark or service mark? If you need a California legal document assistant to help, look no further. From estate planning to officiating weddings, we have decades of experience making the paperwork simple. We’ll work with you, hear what you need, at get it done cleanly and quickly. Call us at 562-547-3255 or send us a contact form here.