jonas_grant
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Most of the answers are completely wrong. You can't copyright an idea. You can only copyright the expression of an idea. Ideas are difficult to protect - contract law in some instances, and patent law in other instances can help. Also, laws vary country by country, and no one knows where you are.
PS - It's copyright, not copyrite.
PPS - Contrary to some other bad answers you have received, trademark law protects names, not copyright law. |
mark_harrison_uk2
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There are three, completely separate, bits of Intellectual Property protection that you may need to consider.
1: Copyright (note spelling), that covers particular "expressions". (Pieces of text, music, photographs or works of art.)
2: Trademarks, which cover the use of a "business name" for a particular type of business
3: Patents, which cover inventions (not, as is commonly believed, ideas!)
4: NDA (Non-disclosure agreements.)
To take them one by one:
1: Anything you write is automatically your copyright, unless you assign it to someone else. (If you type it on a forum, or Yahoo! Answers, you may well find that you have assigned it to the people who run the website in question as part of their standard terms.)
Copyright means that no-one can copy the words / sounds / picture without your permission. However, they can use IDEAS from it.
So, my book "Property Negotiation" is covered by Copyright - no-one can go and photo-copy it, and re-sell it as their own... but they can take the ideas from Chapter 4 and write their own book about negotiation in their own words.
To Copyright something, you don't actually NEED do anything other than write "Copyright [Year] YourName" on it... however, to PROVE that you did so at the time you claim, a common trick is to post a copy of the item to yourself RECORDED DELIVERY, with a seal over the letter AND DON'T OPEN IT. Then, if you need to prove the copy is yours, you can present it to the judge, and let him/her open it in court... thus showing that you had it on the date the letter was signed for.
2: A Trademark is a name as applied to a particular business area. The areas are defined in law, and the same name can be used by different companies in different business areas. So, for example, Kingfisher is owned as a trademark by Kingfisher plc (the company who own B&Q and Screwfix), who have the right to use that name for DIY stores, but also by United Breweries, who have the right to use that name for lager.
To get a trademark, (which come in a "logo" form and "words" form), you need to send a copy of the mark off to the trademark office, with a fee for a few hundred quid (more if you need multiple categories.) They will, over about 6-8 weeks, assess whether to grant it or not... If they say "yes", it then goes out across Europe for a period of several months, during which companies can object .... if they have already been using the name in the same business area (and can prove they've been doing so.)
3: A Patent protects an INVENTION. An invention has an abstract (ie - a summary), a description (which has to show how to build it), and claims about the "novel features". You HAVE to have the invention, not just the idea. For example, we applied for a patent on the use of cross-coupled LC filters in the output stage of an X-10 transmitter... In order to do this, we had to do more than say "it would be a neat idea to use cross-coupled LC filters in the output stage of an X-10 transmitter" - we had to design the device, and include its circuit diagram in the patent application.
Filing a patent is specialised, and you are well advised to do as we did, and get a patent agent to draft the claims... it's an odd, legalese, art, that seems to bear little relation to the actual engineering or for that matter to normal English.
Please note that, in the USA, it is possible to patent a wider range of things, including "software" and "business methods" that are NOT embodied by a specific physical invention... European Patent Law rules that these CANNOT be so protected in the EU.
4: NDAs.
If you wish to discuss your business idea with people on a "you can't copy it" basis, you may wish to get them to sign an NDA first. Be warned that many people will refuse to do so. NDAs basically say that "you can't act on what I'm about to tell you... unless you then hear it legally from someone else."... but take about 2 pages to do so :-) There are some OK free ones you can download (search for "UK non-disclosure agreement" on your favourite search engine.) |
JC_26
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There is a difference between getting a copyright and getting other types of intellectual property protection for ideas (like patents), I believe a copyright would be more for a specific name you have for something or some type of media you've created (a story you wrote, a song you recorded) for which you and only you have the right to make COPIES of (like you can't go out and make copies of a newspaper and sell them yourself), so if this is an idea for a new product or something you may not want to get a "copyright" .
Anyways, a good first step for any idea is writing it in an email and sending it to yourself, same as the above saying to mail a letter to yourself, this will be proof of you having the idea at a specific date, I would start off with that so if for example someone tries to steal the idea you would have proof that you had it first (of course it would then cost you to take legal action against them).
But at least this is free vs. getting a patent lawyer and submitting for a patent, that would likely cost you something in the range fo $2000-$5000.
Now back to getting an actual "copyright", I don't think it actually costs anything (or very little to really file for one), you can just put (c) and your name and I believe it can be legally binding even if you haven't officially filed it (I know of this being done for websites and music albums, meaning the info there is not free to copy for other use). |
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