A copyright is a document granting exclusive right to copy, publish and sell literary or musical or artistic work. You need a patent to protect a design idea. You can go to www.uspto.gov to undertake the patent process; however, it is recommended that you consult a patent attorney. You may copyright some types of designs, such as the design of a building, sculpture, web page, computer program or a cartoon character. Other designs are best protected with a trademark, where the design is used in association with your goods and services. A design of a mask work, for an integrated circuit, can be registered in the copyright office, as can the design for the hull of a vessel. Finally, as suggested above, if your design for the ornamental appearance of an object meets various criteria, you might qualify for a design patent. In fact, you may combine copyright, trademark and patent protection on the same design, if it qualifies. There are limitations of each type of protection. For example, a copyright cannot protect any functional aspect of an otherwise ornamental design, a trademark only protects a design when used on a product or service, and a functional patent only lasts 20 years or 14 for a design patent. The costs and jurisdictional scope for each type of protection also vary widely.
You don't patent logos. Patents are granted on new and useful processes, machines, articles of manufacture, or compositions of matter, or any new and useful improvements thereof. Logos generally don't fall under those statutory categories. However, logos can be covered under trademark or copyright law.
Typically a logo would be protected by trademark law; you can trademark the use of the logo in conjunction with sales of a patented item.
For example, if you want to sell the insulated cup (patent D214458) with your logo printed on it, you may wish to register the logo with the Goods and Services code for "Coffee cups, tea cups and mug."
Yes! It is important to trademark your logo so no one else can take that idea and turn it into their own
1 hv no idea
The author of a creative design is the owner of the copyright automatically.
A Copyright would protect an authors idea.
Copyright someone elses design
If the design meets the minimum requirements for copyright protection, yes.
Aspects of the design that are entirely your original work, such as a piped or carved design, may be protected by copyright as a work of visual art; the US Copyright Office has asserted that permanence is not required for protection.
Yes, if the web design legally belongs to you. Add © copyright YEAR NAME OF COPYRIGHT HOLDER to the bottom of each page of the website. This will signal to honest people that the web design is copyrighted and may not be used elsewhere.
If you control the copyright, anywhere. If you don't control the copyright, and don't have a license, nowhere.
Architectural works are protected by copyright.
a design idea is where you plan your design which you are going to make.
Yes, if it is "creative" and "original" and falls within the statutory definitions of copyrightable materials and not in the definition of works denied copyright. Copyright does not cover "any idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery". 17 USC § 102(b).
You cannot copyright an idea, only the expression of it. Printed instructions, for example, could be protected.