Copyright and Trademark: What’s the difference between trademarks and copyrights?
July 28, 2007 by Elizabeth Potts Weinstein
Copyrights and trademarks are both intellectual property rights that you may own as a business owner or entrepreneur. But many new business owners are confused about the role of each right in their business, and what the differences are between these property rights.
A trademark is a word(s) or symbol you use in commerce in conjunction with a product or service. A copyrighted work is a original creative work that has been memorialized in tangible format. But how does that apply to you as a small business owner?
Trademarks:
When you market and sell your products and services, you are likely using words, combinations of words, logos, or tag lines, to make your products and services memorable. For example, I use the words “The Wealth Spa” to give meaning to my financial and legal services and products for small business owners. If someone else was to start using “The Wealth Spa” to describe their financial services, I would be very unhappy — because they would be stealing the name recognition (and traffic) that I have built up through hard work and spending money on marketing.
As a society, we also don’t want customers to be confused. If someone is looking for me, and types in “The Wealth Spa” into google, they should be able to find me — not some other random person who has decided to also call themselves “The Wealth Spa.” So we have created laws to give protections to small business owners, so they can sue people who use their trademark without permission
Copyrights:
When you make a creative work, such as an article, book, piece of music, photograph, or painting, you are creating something unique that has inherent value. As soon as that work is given tangible format (the audio is recorded, the article is written), then it could be copied by someone for their own gain, unless you have some protection. For example, I have an eBook called Six Simple Steps to Get Out of Debt & Stay Out. If someone took that eBook and put their name on it, and sold it on their website, I would not be compensated for all of my work in creating that eBook.
As a society, we want to encourage people to create creative works and share them with us, without fear that someone will steal what they have created. So we have created copyright law to give the owners the right to sue people who take their work without their permission.
Learn more about Copyrights and Trademarks
- What are Patents, Trademarks, Servicemarks, and Copyrights? on the United States Patent & Trademarks Office
- Copyright, Patent and Trademark Basics by Thomas G. Field, Jr. of the Franklin Pierce Law Center
- Book: Patent, Copyright & Trademark: An Intellectual Property Desk Reference
from Nolo Publishing
- Next Post — When Do You Need to Register a Trademark or Copyright?
[...] Potts Weinstein presents Copyright and Trademark: What is the difference between trademarks and copyrights? posted at The Wealth Spa, saying, “Copyrights and trademarks are both intellectual property [...]