In today's world, the protection of intellectual property is paramount to the success or failure of any venture. There have been stories of computer game companies, among other corporations, have more unique visitors to the websites set in place to help gamers, than there were copies of the game printed.
Clearly there is something wrong with the world when something like this happens. It's not just a person sharing a file with one or two of their closest friends, but people sharing files with possibly thousands of their closest friends.
Today there are several ways to protect your intellectual property. They may not prevent people from pirating your intellectual property, but they will give you leverage when someone has been caught that is.
First, what is intellectual property? As can be figured from the name, Intellectual Property is property of the intellect, that is, something that someone has made that required them to use their mind to create. Examples of Intellectual Property include such things as inventions, books, music, and films.
Most people use their Intellectual Property to make money by selling a book, product, video, or whatever it is that contains the creative process of their work.
We use copyrights, trademarks, and patents to protect these Intellectual Properties for limited periods of time so that the original creator may use them to gain financially. Each of the three protect different types of intellectual work.
Copyrights protect works such as ebook, novels, videos, music and movies. The terms of copyright protection have varied over the last decade; currently copyright protection on a work lasts for the life of the author, plus 70 years after his death. However, if the work was created as a "work for hire" for a business, government agency or corporation, etc., , then the copyright protection term is 95 years or 120 years after it was first created, whichever comes first.
A trademark often refers to any of the different types of marks registered with the United States Patent and Trademark Office. The two most common are trademarks and service marks. You can find trademarks on all canned goods in a grocery store, for example. These are commonly used as logos on cans of soda, packages of lunch meat, DVDs of television shows, or just about anything else. Most items created and sold today have a logo that could be trademarked. Most slogans used by anything from fast food franchises to grocery stores to radio stations could possibly be trademarked. For example, the "swoosh" used by Nike to denote their shoes is a registered trademark, as is the distinctive lettering the Coca-Cola company uses on their products.
A patent is most commonly used for inventions. Patents grant inventors the right to use and disseminate their inventions for a restricted amount of time, usually 20 years. At the end of 20 years, the general public is free to use that invention without licensing it from the inventor. Many people use these newly public domain patents to improve upon the original invention. You can also apply for patent protection for chemicals, genes, and drugs.
The fourth protection is called "the trade secret." Trade secrets are not registered with the US Patent office. A product or invention is classified as "a trade secret" if its ingredients contains super sensitive information. The most well-known is the formula for Coca-Cola. There is no limited terms placed upon trade secrets (compared to the other three discussed above); however, once the secret is publicly known, it loses any kind of protection it may have had.
Many items could be protected by several, or even all, of these laws. A good example is Microsoft Windows. Portions of the Windows' code is protected by trade secret. Other portions of Windows' code is protected by copyright, as well as the instructional manuals that came with the software. Certain aspects of how the operating system handles information on a computer is protected by more than one patent. Lastly, Windows name is followed by the ® of a registered trademark.
When submitting software source code to the Copyright Office, you only need to submit the first 50 and the last 50 pages of the source code on paper. Trade secrets are prevalent in software. You can copyright protect much of your software's source code. The portions of code that you want to protect under "trade secrets" must be blacked out on the paper before you submit it.
Nothing can protect an intellectual property with 100% certainty. But, if you registered your work with the Copyright Office or the United States Patent and Trademark Office, this part is easy. You may file a civil lawsuit in a federal district court. But first you should consult a lawyer. If your work is being infringed and sold for profit, the US Attorney has the right to initiate a criminal investigation.
Just about every book, film, or television show today is pirated and placed on a Peer-to-Peer system (commonly referred to as P2P) or a Torrent tracker. Whether or not anyone downloads your work without paying for it is unknown. But once your work appears on such a system, it's almost next to impossible to have it removed.
The method for litigating against those who use your utility patent without permission is easier since most utility patents are used with physical items. For example, a person created, and patented, a system for intermittent windshield wiping for use in motor vehicles. He showed the device to a car manufacturer, who passed on it. A few years later that manufacturers cars all had intermittent wiping technology, and later licensed that technology to other manufacturers. The original inventor filed a lawsuit against the first company and won. He was later planning on going after the licensors.
First and foremost, you should register your work with the Copyright Office or the United States Patent and Trademark Office. That gives you the added benefit of having the US Government in your corner when it comes to litigation, if any pirating reaches that point.© ResearchCopyright.com
