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Just to recap, trademark protects branding and marks. It gives you the right to prevent
others from using confusingly similar marks and logos. It lasts as long as you
use the mark. The more you use it, the stronger your protection.
And there are country-by-country laws that define trademark, and it's optional
to register it, but it has significant advantages if it's approved.
Copyright just gives you the right to prevent others from copying or distributing
or making derivatives of your work. And you could copyright more than just technology.
It's what we do for songs, books, movies, etc. It lasts practically forever but doesn't
prevent independent development. Someone else could do something
independently and come up with something quite similar. You could register it.
It's optional but is required to sue for infringement, and sometimes you see copyright
labeled on the bottom of something with a little c with a circle. That means somebody
is claiming that this is their original work and suggesting that you need their license
or permission to make a copy. Trade secrets as we talked about, you want to keep that
a secret, and it has economic value. No registration is required. It's basically
how safe do you think your idea is going to be inside your company protected with
armed guards and a vault. It can last for as long as you take reasonable steps.
Contracts--again, it's everything that's in the contract, no registration process.
You have whatever protection is defined in the contract.
Now patents are interesting. A patent is a government is giving you a monopoly
by preventing others from making, using, or selling your invention, even if the other's
infringement was innocent or accidental. And this has to be a non-obvious invention.
It has to last--the protection lasts for about 15 to 20 years. And there's a whole
application and examination process, and it's worth you getting up to date and
understanding about patents early on. A very rough rule of thumb is if you're in
web 2.0, you probably shouldn't be spending a lot of time on patents,
though there are exceptions. If you're in life sciences, in the other extreme, you shouldn't
leave your bedroom without a patent counsel walking you out. There are some
rules of thumb for each industry and each market, and you really need to spend
at least an hour before you start your company understanding what rules apply.