· Patents:
A patent for an invention is the grant of a property right to the inventor issued by the Patent and Trademark Office. The term of a new patent is 20 years from the date on which the application for the patent was filed in the United States or from the date an earlier related application was filed, subject to the payment of maintenance fees. U.S. patent grants are effective only within the United States and its territories and possessions.
The right conferred by the patent grant is, in the language of the statute and of the grant itself, “the right to exclude others from making, using, offering for sale, or selling” the invention in the United States or “importing” the invention into the United States. What is granted is not the right to make, use, offer for sale, sell or import, but the right to exclude others from making, using, offering for sale, selling or importing the invention.
· Trademark/Servicemark:
A trademark is a word, name, symbol or device which is used in trade with goods to indicate the source of the goods and to distinguish them from the goods of others. A servicemark is the same as a trademark except that it identifies and distinguishes the source of a service rather than a product. The terms “trademark” and “mark” are commonly used to refer to both trademarks and servicemarks.
Trademark rights may be used to prevent others from using a confusingly similar mark, but not to prevent others from making the same goods or from selling the same goods or services under a clearly different mark. Trademarks which are used in interstate or foreign commerce may be registered with the Patent and Trademark Office.
-Certification Mark – A mark used in commerce, or intended to be used, with the owner’s permission by someone other than its owner, to certify regional or other geographic origin, material, mode of manufacture, quality, accuracy, or other characteristics of someone’s goods or services, or that the work or labor on the goods or services was performed by members of a union or other organization.
- Collective Mark – A collective mark is a trademark or service mark used, or intended to be used, in commerce, by the members of a cooperative, an association or other collective group or organization, including a mark which indicates membership in a union, an association or other organization.
Trademark Application Process:
A registration may be applied for by filing a properly executed application with the Patent and Trademark Office, by mail or electronically via the Internet. The current filing fee of $325 per class should accompany application. Forms may be downloaded from http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/tac/doc/basic/index.html
Via Mail: Addressed to:
Assistant Commissioner for Trademarks Box New App/Fee 2900 crystal Drive Arlington, VA 22202-3513 (These forms may be downloaded using the USPTO PrinTEAS available from http://teas.uspto.gov/indexTLT. html Credit cards are not accepted for paper filings.)
Via Internet: You may file using TEAS – Trademark Electronic Application System, by filling out the required application form online, which checks for completion for you, then pay by credit card or through an existing USPTO deposit account. Both PrinTEAS and eTEAS are available from http://teas.uspto. gov/indexTLT.html.
For a hard copy of the Basic Facts brochure or for answers to specific trademark questions contact the Trademark Assistance Center at 1-800-786-9199. To find out whether any person or company is using a particular trademark it will be necessary to do a trademark search. A Trademark search may be conducted at the Trademark Public Search Library, which is free to the public, at 2900 Crystal Drive, 2nd Floor, Arlington, Virginia, between 8:00am and 5:30pm. A search may also be conducted on the web from a database recently provided by PTO (http://tess.uspto.gov/bin/gate.exe) or by accessing it through the search from their main website. There are also more than 70 Patent and Trademark Depository Libraries throughout the country with locations listed on the PTO site.
Copyright:
Copyright is a form of U.S. intellectual property law that protects “original works” of authorship including literary, dramatic, musical, artistic works such as poetry, novels, movies, songs, computer software and architecture. Copyright does not protect facts, ideas, systems, or methods of operation, although it may protect the way these things are expressed. Original work is under copyright protection the moment it is created and fixed in a tangible form so that it is perceptible either directly or with the aid of a machine or device. This protection is available to both published and unpublished works. The Copyright Act of 1976 gives the owner of copyright the exclusive right to reproduce the work in copies or phonorecords; to prepare derivative works based upon the work; to distribute copies or phonorecords of the work to the public by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease, or lending; to perform the work publicly, in the case of literary, musical, dramatic and choreographic works, pantomimes, motion pictures and other audiovisual works; to display the copyrighted work publicly, in the case of literary, musical, dramatic, choreographic, pantomimes, pictorial, graphic, or sculptural works, including the individual images of a motion picture or other audiovisual work; and in the case of sound recording, to perform the work publicly by means of a digital audio transmission.
Copies of all works under copyright protection that have been published in the United States are required to be deposited with the Copyright Office within three months of the date of first publication. Copyright forms may be obtained from the U.S. Copyright Office in person, by mailing in a request, or by calling the 24-hour forms hotline: (202) 707-9100. These forms may also be downloaded from the Internet: http://www.loc.gov/copyright/forms. Some public libraries carry Copyright forms.
To register a work, you must submit a competed application form a non-refundable filing fee of $30, and a non-returnable copy or copies of the work to be registered. Each work normally requires a separate application and fee. A deposit is usually one copy, if unpublished, or two copies, if published, of the work to be registered for copyright. The Deposit becomes the property of the Library of Congress. Architectural works became subject to copyright protection on December 1, 1990.
The copyright law defines “architectural work” as “the design of a building embodied in any tangible medium of expression, including a building, architectural plans, or drawings. Under the copyright law, the creator of the original expression in a work is its author. The author is also the owner of copyright unless there is a written agreement by which the author assigns the copyright to another person or entity, such as publisher. In cases of “works made for hire”, the employer or commissioning party is considered to be the author. Copyright does not protect names, titles, slogans, or short phrases nor does it protect ideas, concepts, systems, or methods. However, in some cases, these things may be registered as trademarks or granted patent.
