Copyright and Trademark info

For those of you interested in copyright and trademark for your thesis projects, my mother is a lawyer and she shared with me the laws regarding this stuff. She is not a trademark lawyer, but has done trademark stuff in the past. Either way, this was helpful for me and may be for you!


Copyright protection is provided by the government to authors of "original works of authorship, including literary, dramatic, musical, artistic, and certain other intellectual works."

Protection is available to both published and unpublished works. Copyright protection exists from the time the work is created in a fixed, tangible form of expression. The copyright immediately springs into existence and becomes the property of the author who created the work as soon as it is fixed in tangible form.  Only the author, or those deriving their rights through the author, can rightfully claim copyright. In the case of "works made for hire" the employer, not the writer, is considered the author. Copyright holders have exclusive rights to reproduce their works (i.e. photocopies, postings on websites, etc.) and distribute copies for sale. There is no requirement that a work be designated as copyrighted to actually be so. In other words, often times there is no way to know whether a work is copyrighted simply by looking at it. The best response is to simply assume that a work is copyrighted.

There is a common misconception that content found on the internet is considered to be in the public domain and therefore is not copyright protected. This is untrue. The concept of public domain, as it applies to copyright law, should not be confused with the fact that works may be publicly available, such as information found in books or periodical or on the internet. The public domain encompasses all works that are either no longer protected by copyright or never were (i.e. works produced by the federal government are not copyrightable).  Any content in non-digital form that is protected by copyright will be protected in its digital form.  For example, books in electronic format are protected by the same copyright that protects printed versions. Websites may be protected by copyright as single works, and the many different embedded works on websites may also be individually protected by copyright.

You should also be aware of the concept of 'fair use'. Fair use is primarily intended to allow the use of copyright protected works for things such as news reporting, research, and education.  Fair use considers: the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit, educational purposes; the nature of the copyrighted work, etc.

You have created original works, and although you are automatically vested in your copyright work, it is always wise to include the copyright notice.  The required form of copyright notice should include the symbol (©) and the year to be precise. It should appear © 2009 Jessica Floeh.

With regard to trademarks.  A trademark does not have to be simply a word, name or logo.  Almost anything can be a trademark so long as it acts to identify its owner's goods or services, so you should also add the trademark symbol (™) after anything you may eventually wish to register with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).  For instance, each time you use Hanky Pancreas™ it should have the mark.  When you decide you want to register the mark with the USPTO, you will need to demonstrate that you have been attaching the ™ to the mark for a while.  You do not need to have prior permission to use the ™ and in fact it is advisable to just start using it.  Once you complete the application process with USPTO, and the trademark becomes a 'registered' trademark, that is when you would use ®.   It might help to go to the USPTO website for information; this is a very short version of a complex area of law.  I also have a beast of a book entitled 'Guide to Registering Trademarks' that we can refer to once you have a better idea what you want to proceed with and register.  In the meantime, use the symbols liberally.


On the apple computer, if you press the option key then G, you get ©.
If you press the option key then 2, you get ™.
If you press the option key then R, you get ®.