Lecture 4 Flashcards
4 kinds of Intellectual Property
- Copyright
- Patent
- Trademark
- Trade secret
Trademark Covers
-company/product/service name, logos, other branding
-Applicant must be quite specific about what the trademark covers. Apple owns a trademark for computers. Apple Records owns a similar trademark, but for music.
-A trademark not defended in court against infringement may be lost (use it or lose it)
This is only true of trademarks. It is not true of copyrighted or patented material
Trademark Registered with:
US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO)
Trade Secret Covers:
-the colonels secret recipe – whatever your workplace has thought of that nobody else has, that it doesn’t want anybody else knowing
Trade Secret Registered with:
- not registered. Protected with NDA contracts instead.
- NDA = non-disclosure agreement
Lasts
- as long as the secret is kept. Infringers can be sued
- If you leak something, though, your workplace can lose trade-secret status on it
Patent Covers
an invention, including novel business methods
Patenet Registered with:
- USPTO
- This is a complex process, partly due to the need to establish that the invention is actually new (demonstrated propr ar may derail a patent app)
Patent Lasts:
- 20 years from earliest claimed filing date (In the US)
- Extensions are sometimes possible
- If you can prove a new use for the drug this is the case
Copyright Covers:
- “original works of authorship…fixed in a tangible medium of expression”
- Yes the internet is tangible for copyright purposes. Just because you can find something on the open web, doesn’t mean it’s not copyrighted
Copyright Registered with
- US Copyright Office
- This is optional (it isn’t always) but you can’t recover statutory damages (the big bucks) or attorney fees in an infringement lawsuit unless you registered
- If you notice an infringement of your work, register it right away
Copyright Lasts:
- life of author +70 years
- Corporate – authored works: 95 years from publication or 120 years from creation
Licenses
- A copyright, trademark, or patent can be licensed to any person or org. that doesn’t own it
- This allows the licensor to do things with the material that otherwise wouldn’t be legal
- It’s a legal contract
- As a contract, a license can say whatever both parties want it to!
What’s copyrightable?
Creative/original writing, photos, film, video, website content, software, art music, choreography, architecture
what’s not copyrightable?
- Words, titles (too short), ideas (until you capture/express them somehow), recipes, methods, inventions
- Facts and compilations of facts, no matter how much effort it took to compile them (this is different in Europe!)
complications with music
-Complication 1: separate copyrights in the composition and its performance
-Complication 2: in the US sound recordings don’t fall under federal copyright law
-Complication 3: compulsory licensing
-If you want to cover a song, you pay a license fee to
ASCAP or similar agency and you can record your
cover
work for hire
- If you make a copyrightable item at work
- Or if you’re a contractor or freelancer
- Your employer, not you, owns the copyright in that work
The Public Domain
-An original work that:
-Is not copyrightable by law (federal-government-
created-work) OR
-Has had its copyright term expire
-Is legally in the “public domain”
-Copyright law no longer applies; anyone can do anything with the work
first sale rule
- If you legally buy a physical object containing copyrighted material (book, CD, or DVD), you can do what you like with that physical object
- There is no first sale right in copyrighted digital info!
Fair use
- Copyright law does not prohibit all copying
- Copying without asking permission or getting a license may be legal under the fair use doctrine of US copyright law (section 107)
Four factor fair use dealing
-Nature of the use
-The more socially-useful, the more likely the judge will
think it’s fair
-Nature of the work
-The more factual the work, the more likely a use is
fair; the more creative the work, the less likely a use is
fair
-Amount of the work used
-Rule of thumb use only what you absolutely need to
-Effect of this use of the work on the market for the work
-The more the use harms the copyright owner’s
income, the less likely the judge will think it’s fair
