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| Helping eCommerce Entrepreneurs, Information Marketers, & Authors protect what's theirs—their valuable Intellectual Property! |
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Intellectual Property, sometimes called IP is something that you own (your property) that you creat with your own mind—your own intellect. A bundle of rights, which include copyrights, trademarks, patents, trade secrets, & right of publicity. Think of a shopping cart filled with fruit. You have apples, oranges, bananas, grapes, and kiwis. While all of those items are fruit, each is a distinctly different type pf fruit. A kiwi tastes different than an apple, and an orange has a different look and feel from a banana. Yet, they are all fruit. Think of IP the same way. You have 5 distinctly different types of property rights, but they all protect your intellectual property. Here's a quick overview of what each right protects:
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COPYRIGHT Law
A legal form of protection for an “original” work of art that has been reduced to a “tangible” form. Works, which can be protected by a copyright include books (including eBooks), articles, software, downloadable products, web content, video, speeches, visual art work, motion pictures, and CDs. What can not be protected by copyright are ideas, plain facts, material with no original content, book titles, names, phrases, slogans, procedures included in copyrighted work, material without the notice symbol published before March 1, 1989, and anything in the public domain.
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TRADEMARK Law
A word, logo, design, phrase, sound, fragrance, or a combination of those items, which identifies the source of products and/or services. Trademarks provide both access to, and protection from a vendor, by making it easy for a consumer to know where to go if they want to purchase a product, or who to call in the event of a problem. Some examples of protectable trademarks are Golden Arches for McDonalds, APPLE for computers, Microsoft for computer software, Windows for operating systems, & the Law & Order theme song.
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PATENT Law
A property right granted to the inventor of a new or useful invention or improvement to an existing invention. Patent protection allows the inventor to exclude anyone from making, using, or selling the item. Examples of items protected by patent are pharmaceuticals, software, plant strains, formulas, & technology products.
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TRADE SECRET Law
Any confidential information about a product or service, which gives someone an economic advantage over their competitors. An example of a trade secret is the formula for Coca-Cola. Know one, except those with a need to know, knows what it is. One major distinction between a trade secret and a patent is that the patent application requires the extensive disclosure of information, so nothing is secret. A trade secret, on the otherhand, allows the owner of the trade secret to maintain the secrecy of their proprietary information. Several years ago, Microsoft did what some thought to be an unthinkable act--it changed its business model to become more of an open-source company, whereby converting some of its trade secrets to patents. A business judgment decision every company gets to make.
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RIGHT OF PUBLICITY Law
A right granted to an individual to control and profit from the commercial use of their name, image, likeness, or persona (identity). This means you can make money from your own image. What you cannot do is make money by exploiting someone else's image, without their permission. One way this arises is at conferences where meeting want to videotape celebrity keynoters, or where speakers want to videotape their audience members. In order to do so, you absolutely must get there permission.
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