Copyrights, Trademarks, Patents & Trade Secrets: Protecting Your Idea - How To Start A Business

 

trademark of a patent and a trade secret

a copyright is most notably for work of

authorship it's for a book it's for a

movie it's for a written work and just

by creating the cop just by creating the

written work you have a copyright in it

now sometimes you'll see people do

things like they'll write a piece of

work and then they'll send themselves in

the mail sealed because it creates a

date stamp on it you can also do that by

publishing it online these days you can

get a federal registration and a

copyright it's typically about $35 per

each work and it doesn't give you any

more rights to the work that you created

but what it does do is if someone were

to infringe on your copyright you might

be able to claim more damages and get

more money for it but a copyright is for

a written piece of work a trademark is

for a logo a designation or short phrase

and so for example docstoc is a

trademark and you'll see a lot of times

that people put TM next to it that means

that you're putting in your assertion

that you want to have a trademark in

that logo mark or short phrase when you

see that are with a circle you've all

seen that next to something that means

that it's a federally registered

trademark and so coca-cola is a

trademark so you're going to get a

trademark in your name you're going to

get a trademark in your logo you can

trademark short phrases like Showtime

Showtime was trademarked actually

there's a basketball player now the

number one pick that came out of the

draft he's trying to trademark his uni

brow so you trademark a logo a mark then

you have a patent the patent is for an

invention and and copyrights and

trademarks are pretty straightforward

you can just simply do a google search

and they'll walk it the process how you

do it you can also go to sites like

LegalZoom which is a partner bars which

I'm a big fan of patents you will

typically have to work with a business

attorney on I think sometimes

entrepreneurs get too worried about

getting patents a patent is not going to

make your business successful if your

business becomes wildly successful it

may give you some legal defensibility

but your first objective unless it's

something highly specialized highly

technical very specific if we were

starting a business right now that had a

completely new way to refine water and

we invented something that could take

salt water and take out the salt and

then it becomes drinkable water which I

think people are working on this very

moment yeah let's go get that patented

that's pretty important if we genuinely

invent a process that nobody else has we

should have a patent on that and my

piece of advice would be go do that

number one if you're working on building

a website my advice is that 999 times

out of a thousand especially as

first-time entrepreneurs do not worry

about getting a patent it will likely be

something that can't be patented that if

it is isn't going to make a difference

but more importantly shouldn't be the

first focus of your business you can

work with a business attorney on it but

your goal should be on getting customers

and getting going and your first thought

especially for the vast majority of

business that we're going to create

isn't that I need to get patents on the

businesses and also a lot of times

people over value what a patent will do

someone will come into my office and

they'll say well I've got all these

patents on this business I'd say that's

great how many customers you have or

customers I don't have any of those but

I've got these patents I would rather

take happy engaged customers with a

product that I know that they want above

patents in my particular case now again

if we created the next amazing

scientific breakthrough

I'd sure want to have the patents on

those because those are going to be

really important they're going to make

sure that it's valuable but for the vast

majority situations and we're starting

businesses that shouldn't be our number

one concern and then finally a trade

secret is something like a process that

you want to keep secret so for example

coca-cola has a trade secret in their

formula right they don't want anybody

finding out the formula of how they make

coca-cola and a lot of the cases trade

secrets or confidential information

won't be as important for us the basics

that you really want to know about is a

copyright is for a written piece of work

a trademark is for a logo a patent is

for an invention or for a process and

it's a good thing to get a trademark on

your logo right away the big thing that

you want to note for the trademarks is

that especially when you're looking to

name your business you want to do a

search to make sure you're not

infringing on somebody else's trademark

and this is really important and a very

simple way to do it is there's a great

site called trademark iya where when you

come up with the name of your business

you can go there and they'll tell you

what's there but also it is worth

working with a business attorney on this

because the the rule for a trademark is

is it sufficiently confusing mark in a

similar space so there may be people

have actually trademarked you know very

generic words you know square I'm sure

has a trademark on its square card

reader but people are using the word

square for all sorts of things if

somebody else came along and wanted to

start a business that was for a credit

card reader on your phone called squared

then I'm pretty sure they'd be

infringing on squares trademark so the

rule for trademarks is sufficiently

confusing mark and in a similar space

and it is important that for you know

you're going to invest a lot of time

into your business name into the

collateral into the website address and

you do want to make sure that that mark

is not infringing upon somebody else's

that to me is one of the key most

important things that you can do as far

as protecting your IP right up front

because I'll tell you the hassle of

later on in the business

six months a year two years having to

potentially go to change your name and

that may not be the biggest deal if it's

a corner stop in a corner store which in

that case may even sucks though or if

it's a service based business just of

yourself but if you're online and your

website URL is based upon the name of

your business you're really not going to

want to have to change that later on